One must not distill my loving from my being
for they are born a singularity.
Take this labored hand as you will;
sink, sink, sink your teeth into me.
Do you think Eve would have plucked the fruit if apple were replaced by pomegranate?
“How you take apart a pomegranate is how you love.” Should you see me as one, you may peel gently, lay me bare, and gather the arils. When skin is separated from seed, tell God how the sweetness was worth the labor and pray He lets you in. Yet you needn’t be gentle in reciprocating, and I should take your carelessness, your messy mutilation, to be impatience to consume me inside and out until red stains the underside of your fingernails and the corners of your lips so that all who glance at you will know the crime you have committed, and let that be what opens heaven’s gates to you.
Would you rather I stitch myself to perfection or see me bleed?
Watch!—as I unravel the seams of the dress sewn by my mother and thread my needle through a string of defenses and weave for you a tapestry against the words of others, to beguile myself into believing you yearn for my presence more than a cynic yearns for blind faith, as if I have not been bleeding from the needle all this while. This way, and only this way, will our hands be the same color; only one of us can wash the color away and I am looking at him. If my blood creation does not keep you warm, you will be tempted to collect layers made from the hands of others and you will indeed give in to temptation. I ask that I remain the innermost layer that clings onto your shoulders so I might be closest to your heart.
Is there nothing purer or is there nothing more sinister?
Perhaps it is more palatable for you to look upon my worship as a hellhound; one who, upon catching a sniff of devotion, will lunge across treacherous lands to hunt down its prey. But be reminded that my piety is tempered by reason and doubt and can be renewed at any time. It is cannibalistic—my love—for I will strip off parts of my God-given self to sustain your being. Whisper that you are starved and I will stop at nothing to satisfy your hunger at my expense. Absorb the nutrients you need and leave me on the ground for the worms to feast. It is like this that everyone who knows you thereafter has to learn the taste of my flesh. Let my demise postpone your decay.
Would I miss the air if the water were sweet?
Are you a river? I am then a pebble. Are you an ocean? I am then Sisyphus’ boulder. A boat is the last thing I will be. For why would I desire only to glean your surface when I can give myself wholly and explore the depths that you have to offer? Let others sail upon the facade of your waters, content with the shallow pleasures they find. Allow me the privilege of filling my lungs with what they fear. I will exist in the recesses. I will turn pale in your blueness; you need not visit me, only remember that I have made a home of your ribcage.
My love is not gentle; it is all-consuming. My tolerance is not accidental; it is on purpose. My words are not crafted meticulously; they are harvested out of graves in which my past loves are buried. Not everything has to be like something else. Not everything can be like something else. Metaphors don’t do justice to the reality of certain things. There is always something more in the crevices and folds. The lips you use for speaking and the lips you use for confessing are not one and the same. The hands I use to write and the hands I surrender to you are not one and the same.
So let oceans rage and let pomegranates bleed; I will drown you in red by my own design.
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