ladylazarus4
exhausted
- May 12, 2024
- 164
Love (a triptych)
i.
You have hungry eyes
And I, like a fat fruit fly,
Am made to be consumed.
A hand fruit in summer, I
Drip drip drip
Sticky drops into the sea
Evaporate the water
Until you find me
And it all comes raining down
Till even Atlas drowns
ii.
Our bodies thrum their hallowed rhythm
like hummingbirds on a summer morning
You drink your fill from my succulent heart
Beak dipped between two ribs
(I, the source. You, the savior)
Or aspen leaves in the mountain at noon
Peel away the bark till I am raw
And sticky with yellow sap
I am the syrupy confection
Or the cicadas in the humid evening
I claw my way of my old shell
You crawl into it, and I into yours
We are at home within each other.
We are each other
iii.
I cannot seem to write about love
Without returning to consumption.
How macabre, this love,
How adolescent
It is tired:
How often has it been written as
Tart pomegranate juice dripping down a chin,
Jewel-toned and lustful?
Or the devotional bite of canines into flesh,
The meat, the sustenance,
The hunger.
Is it love?
i.
You have hungry eyes
And I, like a fat fruit fly,
Am made to be consumed.
A hand fruit in summer, I
Drip drip drip
Sticky drops into the sea
Evaporate the water
Until you find me
And it all comes raining down
Till even Atlas drowns
ii.
Our bodies thrum their hallowed rhythm
like hummingbirds on a summer morning
You drink your fill from my succulent heart
Beak dipped between two ribs
(I, the source. You, the savior)
Or aspen leaves in the mountain at noon
Peel away the bark till I am raw
And sticky with yellow sap
I am the syrupy confection
Or the cicadas in the humid evening
I claw my way of my old shell
You crawl into it, and I into yours
We are at home within each other.
We are each other
iii.
I cannot seem to write about love
Without returning to consumption.
How macabre, this love,
How adolescent
It is tired:
How often has it been written as
Tart pomegranate juice dripping down a chin,
Jewel-toned and lustful?
Or the devotional bite of canines into flesh,
The meat, the sustenance,
The hunger.
Is it love?