you are told the story from the middle : the man & the woman in the garden. there was an undignified rutting of flesh that overlapped another continuously, humankind resulted from mitosis and a few stubborn cells. & year after year skin pulls and pushes against bone, the body moves outwards, the body multiplies, the body is a faithful feeder of the wheel-animal that is god.
here is what i remember : my stomach to his mouth, the taste of desire is salt-touched, like skin, like sweat. apple-sweet is a human invention. the leftover of it hides behind my teeth still, my personal ghost, the point of my tongue constantly looking for remnants of that very same rush still; from mouth against mouth, lip to lip, hands to other equally hungry parts. the stomach teaches the body this greediness, this want & wanting, a never-ending hollowness. the garden is the half-devoured vestiges that him and i have left behind.
here is the story spread out, naked and pulsing : sometimes things shimmer in the dark and the devil sees it and wants it, & so he puts it first between his teeth, then his throat, then in his stomach. i have watched fire rising from behind his eyes before, not light — only the act of burning. eyes-containing-the-sun. & his face moves, there are his teeth… do you see it ? the row of knives of it. our shared silence is not intimacy, it slits like razors, which is to say i look back at him with a certain sharpness he is not used to, which is to say i do not recoil from the warmth of his skin, but i do not welcome it. ❛ you have a very particular way of remembering things. ❜
the thing about history is: someone always has to write it — before , during , or after , someone has to put it down, words to paper, pen to ink to parchment, metal to stone. this is the oldest story & the truth has been forgotten : SON-FATHER-FALL. all good stories can be simplified to the basest of terms , all complexity lost to salacious one-word descriptions , the cross and the crooks and the crux all fumbled and mixed and lost even to the poets themselves — and this is no exception, of course. perhaps the poets would rather ignore it : there is no glamour to this tale, only ever gore, and some kind of heartbreak ( this is the oldest story & the truth has been forgotten: this is what betrayal tastes like , judas’ kiss from a father to a son , and from a son to a father ). BUT THIS IS NOT WHAT THIS STORY IS ABOUT / THIS IS : DESIRE LIES IN THE INTERVAL BETWEEN REACH AND GRASP.
[ THIS THE POETS ALWAYS UNDERSTOOD : DESIRE IS THE HOLE / DESIRE IS THE WANTING. ]
all stories start like this : someone wants something, otherone wants otherthing, and so conflict insues. but sometimes, two bodies want the same thing, and sometimes it is not a thing but a who, not a who but each other. DEATH & THE DEVIL, only he was not the devil but an angel, and not an angel but the favorite, not the favorite but the prodigal one — LOVE & LUST & ALL THAT LIES IN BETWEEN , and death , and he , and he , and death. lucifer has never known a love he has not turned his back on & this is no different. he clicks his tongue in a disappointed tsch and waves his hand. ❛ that is not what i mean. i remember it as it was : you were the first. there could have been none other. ❜ he does not flinch at the coldness of her , but only barely , and if had he known of ‘shame’ he would have felt something akin to it. he does not know it. ❛ and what of cain? have you seen him as of late? ❜