My lover is exceptionally beautiful and would remain thus
even if she were not mine. Each day when she sleeps
I say small unprayers that her dreams will become more pleasant
than they are. When she sleeps her claws are duller than mallets
and sharper than swords- I gash myself with them and grow drunk
with the glory and wonder of my courage. When she sleeps I whisper her secrets.
"I am dangerous beyond your ken. I would kill the sun if I feared shadow."
Because she is a woman her body is soft in the most perfect places.
She sings. If I, too, sing, then it is as if I breathe and stone, too, breathes.
I sympathize with the exultations of the ancient priests, those that tear
hearts away atop stair-stepped pyramids and send souls to a dark master,
those that move hands like knives upon the necks of dove-white doves,
the red-beard who chains the largest of his male slaves to a tree before letting
out the blood: to know a god is real is insufficient.
Ritual is the manifestation of belief.
When I lay with her and her teeth rend slightly at my flesh, she is satisfied with this.
I dare not do the same to her. How could I ever stop devouring, if allowed to begin?
I would be a madman sentenced to death for ripping her limbs from her body,
for twisting at her neck, gnawing her liver, for every awful detail of my horrific feast.
Of such is the kingdom of heaven.
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