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17 February 2016

only ever sin

“the nature of desire is such”, said a well-meaning
philosophy professor, “that it is never ending”. 
i test the phrase on my eager tongue.
“the nature of desire”, i say. gently.
the earthy word settles like dust
on the sensual sound of ‘desire’. 

i lie back in my field of gold sunsets
and fashion rhetoric from my angst.
there is so much desire. so much need
to possess, so much wild yearning.
i languish in these fragments. i ache.

somewhere i told myself i could gather
the world in the palms of my hands
if only i could know it

; god knows i desire it. god knows,
if he knows anything at all.

knowledge, i said. if instinct doesn’t work.
eager, i bit into the apple. it was all illicit seed 
and white flesh ensconced in skin.
little did i know
it was only ever sin.

eventually, all the pathways
lead the same way. there is
despair. there are gold sunsets.
there is fleeting joy. an essential
misunderstanding.

it is all half lives.
it is all unknowable.
infinitely desirable.
infinitely unreachable. 
the world laughs at my pains
and tells me it's been waiting
in my palms all along. i try to smile

; my mouth is bloody with apple skins and ache.

all the tears that have filled me up to the brim
are hurting me. i cannot untie them from my eyes
because they are not mine. i will never own
the important things. i will never know

eventually there is a hopeless hope:
words that whisper to my spine and tremble
under my ribs and come to rest, nestled under 
my neck, like newborn moons meeting darkness
for the very first time.

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