Love has sated my palette and destroyed my appetite for more. I have reveled in the flavors of love. It has danced upon my tongue and wetted my lips. It has made my head swim with drunken pleasure and filled my insatiable hunger. I have lusted for it and yearned for it as a dying woman clings to life's precious embrace. I have tasted love and found it sweet.
But as love begins as sweet juice flowing freely across dry lips, it also sucks the life out of you. Love makes you weak in the knees and ill in the stomach. As love leaves your body the flavor spoils and all you are left with is a taste and smell so rancid it makes your stomach turn and your head spin. I have tasted love's flavor and found it bitter.
The truth of love is so pure and clean and simple. Love can sneak up on you as a breeze stirring your hair. Or it can knock you over like a hurricane. It may come as a slow warmth on a cool night. Or sear you like the desert's sun...burning flesh, drying rivers, and baking the mind. Love is strong. Love is powerful. Love is a force of nature. I have found it to be both a kind and cruel mistress.
I have seen the sweet colors of love. It has been the delicate pink of the ocean's tiniest shells. And I have crushed it under foot while walking along my life's shores. It has been the vivid red of the rose. And I have watched it's petals turn black and wilt while admiring the other blooms in my heart's garden. I have been blinded by its overpowering vividness. And been blind to its subtlety.
I think of love now, because I do not taste it. Do not feel it. Do not see it. But I sense its nearness. I can sense its breath on my neck. Its footsteps echo in my ear and draw ever closer. It is just below the surface of everything. Its hands reach for me. Its fangs attempt to dig into my flesh. Love is a tangible presence that terrifies and enthralls me. As I run from it, I beg for it to catch me. I pray that it makes me its victim. That love captures me, forces me into submission, and bends me to its will. Love is undeniable. Love is insatiable. It is the truth of all things. And the ruin of all things. Love is a strange creature.
Love is an overwhelming, overbearing, wicked thing. It turns everything downside-up. Sounds are not what they once were. Flavors are different. Sensations are confusing. My senses are on overload. Every taste, touch, smell is so strong that I cannot bear it. Love can be beautiful or it can be ugly. It can give you life or it can bring about your death. It can lift your heart to the sky or it can plunge it into Hell's fury.
These moments...the ones when I know love is coming for me, but has yet to make itself seen...are the hardest to bear. It is as if some dark unseen evil stalks me. I am terrified of it and yet I want it out it the open so I can fend it off or surrender to love's deadly embrace. It is this thick red creature that crawls and oozes along the floor and ceiling and walls of my heart and mind. I can hear it slithering, waiting for just the right moment to attack. To envelop me in its smothering embrace. To fill my mouth with its thickness. To choke me. To bind me to its twisted vile body and make me a part of it. This creature called love wishes to devour me whole. To toy with me. To wound me. To open veins. To terrorize me. To fill me with a fear that I cannot escape. It wants my submission. It wants me frozen in terror so that I have no choice but to surrender to my heart. To bare my chest, to give it my heart to feast upon.
I am afraid. I shake. I hear terrifying noises when there is only silence. And the silence is deafening. I creep and crawl and cower away from love's presence. I see only darkness as it stalks me. It knows where I am. I cannot run. My only hope is to slide through the darkness as silently as possible. But it doesn't help. The creature can smell my fear and stalks me all the more. Love wants to possess me, own me, break me. It wants to crush my will beneath its foot. It wants my complete supplication.
I can feel it closer now. It is there just beyond my sight. Through the darkness of my heart I see its outline. I see its huge hulking monstrous form. It steps closer...into the light. Still in shadow, but I begin to see. I can see loves bared fangs. Its taut muscles as they tense to attack. Its claws dripping with the blood of thousands of victims. Love is a powerful creature. Strong. Towering. Unstoppable.
It comes closer to me. Oozes closer. Slides closer. Stalks quietly closer. And I see love now. All of it. And it is more evil, more vile, and more devious that I ever imagined. Because it is beautiful. It is wonderous. It is pure and clean and innocent and smiling down at me. I still see love's deadly fangs, the razor-sharp claws, the abundant muscles. But they are the most beautiful things I have ever seen. My heart stops beating, the air in my lungs stops moving, my knees are weak. I want this creature to take me now. I want to know its bite. I want to feel its claws dig into my flesh. I want to feel love's power as it crushes me in its clutches. I welcome the pain of it all. I want to feel this creature against my body...in my body...in my heart. I want it to own me, possess me, destroy me.
It comes closer to me. Steps closer. Glides closer. Gently pulls me into its embrace. There is no panic. It enfolds me in its powerful arms. There is no fear. Its mouth lowers to mine. There is no bitter taste. Its claws dig into the flesh of my body. There is no pain. Its fangs sink into my beating heart. There is no pain. Its muscles squeeze me ever tighter, crushing me. There is no pain. It owns me. No pain. It possesses me. No pain. It destroys me. No pain.
I am of it. Part of it. There is no me, only the creature called love. There is no thought. There is no seperation between it and me. I am the creature. The creature is me. And I am reborn in love. And there is no pain. Love is a strange creature...as am I.
