i. there’s a girl. narrow-*****, wild hair like a lion’s mane, sprawled underneath the shade of a looming fig tree. her teeth are all that’s sharp about her. soft curves, soft lips, a soft paradox in the Garden. in this lost land, there she is, subtle and tinged with the same stardust you once believed could save us all.

angelic, you’d call her, if she looked more grotesque. more like the cherubim of ol’, dressed in flames, impaled on swords, screeching the name “hosanna, hosanna” without mouths. but there are no wings, no heavenly trumpets, just the afterimage of divinity– something laced with hope, but already rotting. she spits out seven seeds and you don’t know if this is a land of God or gods anymore.

ii. she smiles and it feels like death.

you are unable to solve the riddle sprung from the lion’s ribcage– but the roof of your mouth tastes like honey and blood and you don’t mind. there’s no linearity, no familiar whine of a donkey, nor the sound of sand against gravel or sandaled feet marred by sunburns and blisters.

there is simply you and her and an eternity of possibilities that whisper in a forked tongue, “adam, oh adam,” and your heart drops. is this the end? but it tastes so sweet and you are alright to die like this, cradled between what was once in your womb and a creature of scales.

you do not expect the guilt that drips down your chin with each rivulet of juice.

iii. they call it love.
you call it divine absolution.
she calls it the beginning of humanity.

the floor is icier than the last time i crumbled down here. i'm enclosed within the walls of eerie silence, blackness all around me, enveloping my terror, releasing my pain. tears seem to find their own way down to the floor, first dancing with delight, then solidifying and morphing into dark crystals. what is more comforting than the fetal position? the escape that has been written repeatedly into my screenplay of a life.