woman, I loved you, but you left me hungry,
virginal,
legs spread open and tongue anxious for your inner thighs, for your fingertips, your
earlobes and toes.
girl, I wanted you, but you took your leave,
and what is a woman without sex,
What is a woman without hunger?
this feels like a genesis, like you’ve pulled me all the way back to eden,
and we are both eve,
only I am made of your rib cage.
you were my point of origin and the only identity
I’ve ever known,
and you have taken leave of me,
and I have bitten into a great red and firm apple
in reminder of you, in aching for you,
and it has brought me to the brink of sexual revolution,
only I am alone now in a divine garden, in a predetermined diorama of love-lost and
nonconsensual grief, and all I've got for the rest of time is a half-eaten apple and a
wandering spirit,
and no forefathers and no bible for guidance;
there is no god in my eden,
and there is no you, and so I must go and find myself a new lover, a new and kinder
woman,
a doctrine of love and a ten-step guide to orgasm:
I know a biblical man who has never been touched, except by sheep and King-James-Ink
(chastity has taken his manhood)
and neither has he found love, and so he will join my traveling circus of sex-seekers;
we are soft-skinned and full-lipped and I have got rounded breasts,
and years ago on the road to Jerusalem
a pretty-faced king with mean eyes thought I was a thing to be conquered, and so
conquered me, though I am not much in the market for kings,
and still I have not found anything soft like you, anything divine like you,
and still I search for fingers like yours,
for a tongue like yours,
for scripture like that which we wrote together:
your body was full, and you tasted of salt,
and you were a creature of heat and holiness all at once,
and you have left me ravenous.
Aderet Fishbane is a young lesbian poet whose work is confessional and kind of obsessive, and explores things like sex(uality), grief, pretty people, and religion.
