That night,
when the dark coiled like a serpent around my neck,
I saw her…
She did not arrive from a door,
nor from any direction
she emerged from within me,
as if my blood had chosen to take form.
She said, walking through my bones, not upon the Ground:
Do you know me?
I answered, trembling beneath my own skin:
I know you as hunger… but I do not know your name.
She smiled
and in her smile lived something of the first sin,
and something of a forgiveness not yet written.
I am your hunger, she said,
but you were mistaken to think I am a body.
I moved closer… or perhaps she did
there was no longer any difference between approach and distance.
Her breath ignited my chest,
as though my lungs had become unseen furnaces.
I said:
But I desire you…
She laughed not in sound, but in a tremor within my being:
You desire me because you think I am an end,
but I am only a door.
I fell silent…
and she continued, placing her hand
or what resembled a hand
upon my chest:
The body, O Son of the Witch,
is but a poor language,
trying to translate what cannot be spoken.
You do not want me…
you want what lies beyond me.
Something within me began to fracture.
I asked:
And what lies beyond you?
She whispered:
The beginning…
the one you have forgotten you came from.
I trembled.
I felt myself dissolving,
my name slipping away,
as though I were returning to something undefined.
I said:
Then why this hunger?
Why this burning?
She replied:
Because it is the call…
the call to return.
Then she drew closer,
until I could no longer tell whether she was within me or I within her,
and she said:
Every desire you do not understand
will lead you into illusion.
And every desire you contemplate
will lead you to me.
I asked her, like a drowning man clinging to the last sound:
And if I reach you?
She answered, with a voice as calm as dawn:
You will not reach…
you will dissolve.
Then she vanished…
or perhaps it was I who vanished,
and nothing remained
but that hunger
yet this time,
it was not seeking a body,
but a path.