I fought for beauty, goodness and truth
against your nihilistic violence of love.
All guards down; teeth, claws, hammers, awls;
frenzied, you wielded your weapons of choice.

Your aim was deadly, like a cheetah taking down a gazelle.
It's only necessary, you said, that nature's black palette
be gentle: It obliterates the conscience, paints over all wounds..

I found mine bearable, torn flesh here, black eye
there, a gimpy walk, an endless headache..My energy
level collapsed; I had no appetite, no ambition, no hope
for escape.

Your hold on me was like the hangman's, delaying the inevitable,
yet asking for a little decorum before the bitter end. And still you
fought like a she-cat, black, sleek, sinewy -- God's beautiful killing
machine. You attacked like lightening -- swift, crooked and wonderfully on fire.

You clawed my face, my back, my brain at its soft spot.
You cracked my skull with your nearly 90-pounds-of-pressure jaw. You tore open my chest, ripped out my heart to sacrifice it to
your gods of vengeance.

Then you drew a map in the blood and offal inside the cavernous
room of my beaten body. The map charted a path to the heart no longer there; to the brain now chomped in half; to the claw marks on my face, my back, my tattered torso. Each path you drew left a ragged incision that eventually healed and left a scar.

"Follow the scars," you said; "they will lead you to the soul --
or the blackened morning sun. Follow them and see
how my love is virtue; how it knows no limits."