I don't know what it is
about bringing god into the most intimate times of your life,
but I couldn't ignore the bible that was spread open
on your nightstand that night.
During the space between
whenever you rolled off of me
and rolled back on,
I was granted time to think about how I ended up
in this dreadfully exposed position
(literally, you told me not to put my clothes back on).
So I thought about how I had convinced myself
that you were as religious as you claimed to be,
and that this would be nothing more than
a simple movie date with a little cuddling.
But whenever you removed your arm from around me
and stood from the couch beside me,
I knew this was going to be far from it.
So I crawled into bed beside you
and felt your hands search my body in the dark
as though you were in a temple on a quest to find a golden cross.
And you found it,
radiating warmth between two stone pillars
that you couldn't resist digging your nails into.
And soon enough,
the walls came crumbling down
and you begged me not to make a sound
as you sank your teeth into my neck
as though you were taking a bite of the forbidden fruit
for the very first time.
And I must have tasted sweet
because your tongue shortly followed
to lap up all the salty juices.
But you were determined to tear the temple down
because you knew how sacrilegious it would be to leave it standing,
so you asserted your strength to the already crumbling pillars
and walls and heard and watched them fall around you
in all their holy glory.
But it wasn't until I was lying beneath you
in a pile of dust
that the bible beside me spoke.
The pages parted like the red sea
and the letters lept from the page like the egyptians
and I was shaking as though Moses himself
was standing before me.
But you didn't notice when you returned,
because your goal wasn't to build the temple walls.
So you climbed back on top of me,
rolled over,
and went to sleep.