Warm, loving, flexible---tainted;

Blood is the key of a person’s personality,

Swimming through the body, making it one with perfection,

Making itself one with isolation, repetition, and salvation.

Curling around your fingers; caressing, idolizing, tainting--

But you soak it all in—this is the livelihood of yourself,

Of your heart, of your lovers and past pretences of them,

White lilies, falling closer and closer to damnation,

But this is what you are, what you’ve always been since the start;

Even as the high towers have fallen after being built,

Still condemned with a hunger and raw itching to stand tall on wavering stilts,

You hold the grail as if it were important, but tossing things away is easier than keeping them,

Even as the one below you searches in your eyes for a soul long lost,

And the shaking you feel as your bodies connect, feeling for emotions,

Feeling for a sense of understanding, rather than judgement and cruelty,

As though you can be lost and yet found at the same time;

Gasps, hard breathing, slapping skin, damnation, idolizing—

Hands grasp your neck, pushing for a closer connection;

You want to be lost in those eyes, but their forcing you to see reality,

And you run from it; taking his body and punishing what should be condemned,

But never will be—even as you leave him breathless, even as you leave scars, burns, and poison on his skin, the white lilies will only fall onto one soul;

He cries out for you, streaming white, hot heat from you to him,

And he’s seen what’s to come, what’s, whose, where’s, theirs—you told yourself no, you told yourself yes, you’ve told yourself to let go, but of what?

His skin is heroin, and you take it constantly, never changing dealers and never accepting any other kinds of packages; the same amount, the same time, the same him.

Even as it’s over, even when he leaves, you don’t clean up already spilled blood, because you know its place on the marble floor, know it’s filth and contamination;

The serpent tastes the blood, tastes the pain, and takes it where the white lilies grow—amongst grassy fields and condemned fruit trees of old,

And you never wonder why or how, but rather whom to blame yourself on;

You make a choice. Black engulfs you.

Finally, you can smile.