"Even if you don't want me,
I'll give myself to you anyways,"
It began with a blossom: once a year,
in the palm of the night.
A sight that only few could witness.
During these small hours in the darkness,
the blossom spritzed the air with ambered scents,
aromas beckoning our heroine and her body, closer,
luring her as if against her own will.
As if the world must know her lust,
her aches and pangs that simmer in her groin
ever since she beheld that virgin bloom.
She stayed until the cereus wilted
with the rising southern sun;
collecting its fallen petals like morning dew,
collecting them in a woven basket to bring back to her home.
For three nights, she molded the petals and the
stems and the leaves and the roots, but not as it once was,
but now resembling as a woman more beautiful than
the blooming itself.
Loam, peat, cherry bark, cacao husks, gaboon—
she oiled the figurine, filling its clay body
with tamarind, fenugreek, and aplectrum root.
Then on a lunar eclipse, she carried her small idol
to the sacred chapel, and she begs and commands the spirits
to bring her a wife as rare as that cereus’ bloom.
And soon the goddesses sang sacred scriptures
and played secret symphonies to pull the Essence
from Agalamaia's ovaries and from the damp fresh mud.
Gaboon ebony skin, coconut eyes, fuchsia lips—
her lady of the dark was alive and she was hers!
Agalmaia brought her precious creature into her lap,
caressing tenderly her lover’s curves.
Her bloomed lover stared longingly, and asked carefully,
“What is my name?” Her voice, a melodious aria.
She smiled, “Phloia.”
She further massaged bacuri butter into her breasts
as they sat in a state of beauty and meditation.
A state of bliss and emptiness,
as the world bent beneath their love.