The 7 Deadly Sins

I can resist anything but temptation. It’s the longing, the bone-deep ache of wanting something so badly, it tears you apart, mind and soul, flesh and blood. It’s all you can think about. The link of nature, the flesh of flesh. The chase never equals the victory. It’s all in running, running so fast, running till you’re sweating and drop to the ground, but you keep going, because you need it, more than taking a breath, more than oxygen. How can the divine compare to the love of flesh? If it’s beastly to want you so desperately, call me an animal. I hold my palms out, I’ll take anything, the tiniest scrap, whatever you give me, I shall cherish eternally. There is nothing that can compare to the soft of your skin, no gold or diamonds, no frothy ocean waves, no sweet of cotton candy, no clouds rolling by. Helen herself, whose face launched a thousand ships, and burnt the topless towers of Ilium, cannot make me feel like you do. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each, but they do not sing to me, I exist only as long as the fire burns me.

Is it wasteful? Is it wasteful to give into what your body needs? There’s no comfort, no middle, it’s all or nothing. Cake, handfuls of grapes, salami, all kinds of cheese, raspberry juice, pomegranate stains, only six at a time, it all disappears. You can only taste it for a millisecond, before it disappears, plunging your stomach into despair. You pinch your elbows, feel around your stomach for bulges, the disgusting evidence for a cycle you cannot stop. You can’t get off the scale, you can’t go swimming, you can’t get your head out of the toilet. What nourishes you, destroys you. If only you cut this out, or stop eating that, if only, if only, and yet it never matters. Everything that enters, enters fast, nimis, and exists faster.

We are defined by our excesses, our abundance. Can it be a sin to know? Can it be death? The sweetest part of the lilacs, is when they’re out of the dead land. Nothing is ever enough for the human soul. Our arms are always reaching upwards, towards the stars, towards things not meant for us, whether we know it or not. The cup of happiness isn’t full until it spills. If we must be kissed, kiss us so hard it gives us a black eye and a hungry mouth. Everything we must have, we must have it all. There are so many worlds, so much to do, so little done, such things to be. There are stones at the edge of the ocean, tumbling, pebbles, sea glass in such raptures of green, of jade, some are rubies, some are lapis, but we’d never know, because we grab them, fling them, barely looking for the shine, the shine that’s promised. We are on our knees, cold water frothing against bare skin, blood unfurling beneath the waves, panting, clawing through the rocks, looking for the porosh pathor, that magic stone, it must be here, among the white sand that glints under the white sun.

Once you’ve lost me, I’m gone forever. The feeling slips through my fingers like an overturned bottle of body wash, silky, never able to hold on. The apathy, it’s sluggish, like the midday sun, too hot to move, even out, even if it’s better for me. I’ll watch you burn and barely blink as the ash spits at me. It’s too late for me, but it might not be too late for you. The songs I used to dance to, now feel sharp and dull at the same time. So what if the world is ending, what can I do about it? My sheets grow stale and my hair gets greasy and the days sail by like ships on a lullaby ocean, never stopping, never waiting to see if I’ll get on. I’m buried, not under despair, but under something so numb I can’t give it a name. My bones weigh me down like iron and flies set up shop in the kitchen sink. Something in my mind is poisoning everything else. The neglect smells terrible. I’ve cried wolf so many times, nobody ever comes again.

The Kafkaesque relief of giving into destruction, it consumes and burns to ash everything it touches. No pity, no selection, no choices, just carnage. It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. When all you see is red, it’s hard to remember the other colors exist. Everything is tainted, the simple spoon you mix your coffee with now scorches your hand, you sob at the empty sky. It’s impossible to go a second without thinking about it. You raise your fists at the sky and dare them to make a fool of you again, your throat is vile and the faces pass by, unknown. All your hatred that keeps you so warm, will charr your skeleton unrecognizable. It’s the kind of thing you feel in your very soul, even though they say the soul is infallible, indestructible, but the right person with the right knife can cut wounds so deep, the blood turns white. As long as your parliament’s on fire and your hands are up, you can pretend throwing knives is noble.

I cannot read, and therefore wish that all books were burnt. If I can’t have you, no one can. I guard it all, with vile green eyes and hard arms. I’ve tried the world, good god, it wasn’t for me. I put my little handprints on all of it, mark it carefully as mine, tainted, scarred, muddied. I’ll plunge my knife, hilt deep, just so nobody else may. I’ll take and take and take, till there’s nothing left of you, and it still won’t be enough. I want to shatter all the mirrors in the world with one thunderclap, Bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk! I want you to never stop looking at me, but I can’t bear the ardor of your gaze. The shinier the diamond, the further it slips from me. But all the Mustangs, all the Faberge eggs, all the rooftop pools, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, can never fill that hole. I’m doomed to remain a specter of what I could be.

The mother of all the other sins, the first sin, it all started with hubris, the greatest disturbance in the soul. The more power you’re given, the more treasures you collect, the slipperier the slope, and it all ends in Fall. It will have you doing the silliest things, the most maddening things. Cancelling a dinner party because the invitation came too late. Not picking up the phone. Refusing to cry. Telling them you’re sorry, even when you don’t mean it. Throwing flowers away before they can rot. Wearing waterproof mascara. Call it what you want, what you worship, consumes you. If you’re always looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.


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  1. I neeeed more content plS