There was a time I wandered through your garden,

starving.

And you—each of you—offered yourselves

as fruit swollen with promise.

I reached for you with cracked hands,

bit in with blind hunger,

and called the bitterness flavor.



You were beautiful.

God, you were beautiful.

But so is nightshade,

so is the blossom that blooms on the mouth of a grave.

Your sweetness was lacquered in arsenic,

your nectar dripped with need.

You tasted of almosts

and if-onlys

and don’t-you-dares

disguised as love.



I swallowed you whole.



Thank you for that.



Truly.

Because I needed the poison.

I needed to tremble.

I needed to wake at 3 a.m.

with my gut twisted into questions,

my lips still red from the lie.



You see,

each of you grew in soil watered by my self-doubt.

You thrived on my silence,

my contortion,

my careful pruning of self

to fit the shape of your hunger.



I tended you like a fool tends a ****,

thinking it would blossom into medicine.

But you were never sustenance.

You were spectacle.

And I—

I was the banquet host,

laying myself out

course after course,

watching you feast

and ask what else I had to offer.



No more.



The garden is closed now.



I’ve uprooted every vine

that once climbed my spine like a lover.

I’ve tilled the rot,

turned the decay into compost,

and from it—

from it—

a single fig tree has risen.

Quiet. Modest.

But true.



She feeds me.

Not with frenzy,

but with fullness.

Not with hunger,

but with presence.

Her fruit doesn’t burn.

It lingers.



So to each bitter harvest:

Thank you.

Thank you for sickening me.

For seducing me.

For starving me so thoroughly

that when love finally arrived,

I could taste it—

and know it was real.



You were never the feast.

You were the lesson.



And I am no longer hungry.



— Formerly Yours,

Now Fed

I did not bloom for you.

I wasn’t planted with hope of a hand like yours

to pluck what I became.



I was here.

Growing in a quiet grove,

on the edge of the unseen—

roots tangled in silence,

leaves turned to a sun I thought only I could feel.



You came like weather.

Not loud,

but felt.

A shift in the light.

A question in the wind.



I didn’t call to you.

But still,

you found me.



I watched you stumble in—

mouth stained from strange fruits,

eyes glazed from sweetness that lied.

And I knew you were not lost.

You were done.



Done with wandering.

Done with feasting on ache.

Done with mistaking hunger for worth.



You looked at me like I was something

you’d dreamed once and forgotten.

Like tasting me

woke up something ancient in you.



And it did in me, too.



Because I didn’t know I was waiting—

not for you,

but for recognition.

For a mouth that didn’t devour,

but asked.

For hands that didn’t harvest,

but listened.



And when you bit into me,

you didn’t praise.

You closed your eyes

and let silence say it.



That was the moment.



No music.

No miracle.



Just two beings

who didn’t know they were searching

until they stopped.



Now here we are.



Still.

Rooted.

Fed.



Not written in the stars—

but grown in the dirt,

together.

Empty your pockets before
you tell me your lies.

Because pockets hold guns,
money, and keys,
and 1000 other things you don't want me to see.

In the beginning we were naked
with nothing to hide.

We walked through this garden side by side.

But now silk robes and deep pockets
complete your disguise.

So empty your pockets 
before you speak to me,
I demand proof
that there's nothing to see!

In fact don't even bother to speak.

I refuse to believe, 
until you've shown yourself to be
every bit as naked
as you've forced me to be!