Soft things that stain

I did not mean to create them. 
I was grieving. 

The earth watched me 
the way a body watches another 
before the first touch— 
expectant, 
open, 
willing to be changed. 

Adonis— 
my beautiful ruin, 
my brief eternity. 

I knelt and pressed my palms into  
its dark mouth. 
Not tears— 
heat fell from me. 
Desire with nowhere to go. 

I coaxed red from darkness, 
heart-shaped,  
strawberries rising from the soil— 
they were not innocent, 
they knew what they were for. 

I tasted one 
and knew that desire would never  
again be clean. 
That sweetness could ache 
and pleasure could bruise. 

When you bite into them now— 
slowly, 
your pulse both runs and answers, 
the deepest,  
most delectable of agonies, of fears,  
mesh, 
that tightening of chest,  
that is me. 

Not love. 
Not grief. 
But hunger made beautiful enough 
for you to kneel.

Photo credits: Pinterest

Posted for Open Link Night #408 @dVerse Poets Pub