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.