The Color of Blood

by Mona Kabbani

I offered the snake a pomegranate ​it found the tiny seeds amusing the color vibrant the flesh soft. The snake thanked me but found it could not tell the difference and when it bit my throat ​i understood love.

I’m around her like a petal-veined snake, hypnotizing her, sheathing her in decadence.

Like parting space and time and creating heaven’s gates with one fell swoop.

I am a blank canvas. A nothing person. A void that can be decorated and designed but never filled.

I wish I could tell her all the ways her mere existence destroys and rebuilds every cell of my being. The foundation I’ve erected my life upon. How she sets my soul on fire.

There are butterflies in my stomach whose wings are made of fiberglass. They slash at the mesentery keeping my insides in place.

There is something uniquely ethereal to her presence beyond just her color. Something torturously holy.

I think about her bones. If they’re made up of dying stars. If they’re made from the same stuff that keeps space suspended. And the thought passes me so sweetly amidst this world-shattering violence: If I am a void, then she is utter totality.

Her eyes are like knives positioned to cut right through me.

you were the world consumed by eternal night and your soul a pocket of darkness.