The Closed Doors

by Pauline Albanese

they are attempting to win her trust, the bastards.

Did I sell my happiness and my innocence for a few pomegranates seeds? Pomegranates were so few where I come from.

I know nothingness as you know light, flower daughter.

I love the brisk taste of wine on my tongue and the burning colour of blood, of pomegranates. Crimson moves me. Crimson makes my heart beat like a adolescent’s; the red of liquor, of muscle, of wounds—of your mouth and your cheeks just before you pound at those closed doors you can’t escape.

Here, I know all the secrets, all the secrets of the world: in the palm of my hand.

Can you hear the screams when darkness is velvet? Can you hear the wheel turning and the song of the scavengers? But it is poetry, you know —poetry comes from the guts and is spat out in a cry.

Liar. Poetry is morning dew and wind between my knuckles.

No. It’s a kiss full of teeth, and a metallic taste on your tongue, the pain under the stomach, there, just there, where you hide your fear and your power.

HADES My tibias, my patellae, bent before you.

Each one of my ribs—I will open each one of my ribs with fingertips, break each one of my ribs, and allow you to dive your hands into my chest so you can feel the beating of my heart. I will show you that life isn’t always warm, isn’t always veiled in dusk and emerald.

I chose you because darkness held you like a hook in the navel. I only had to pull slowly on the hook, slowly, without hurting you,

I chose you because you’re an orchard of ripe fruits, and I want to lay my sufferings in the shadows of your arms, of your belly. I chose you because your tears remind me of September rain. Because of the sun I see in your pupils. You cannot run now, can you? You have found your home. Do you feel the darkness in the hollow of your plexus? Don’t you understand? Your darkness was your secret, and she whispers to mine.

You came to answer my echo. You heard me calling. You couldn’t bear to hear the lies of the sun and of the earth anymore. It was a game of hiding, hiding from your soul and from your mother and from the world. You weren’t a child anymore. And so you followed the six pomegranate seeds without hesitation, without slowing, and you broke them on your tongue to taste the flavor of the awakening. You had fragile legs and vivid eyes. You didn’t scream when the earth collapsed. You knew I was coming for you.

they’re brothers and enemies and rivals and accomplices.

He’s soothing: he still wants to persuade rather than convince. He appeals to the virility of his brother, now. Virility is key, as you know.

I love this strange humour

Will they bare their teeth to their brother, the lonely brother, the monster from Hell? They left me on the other side of the riverbank. They left me here in a world of ashes and graves and moans.

Won’t they allow me rest, won’t they allow me this sole respite?

I alone, I Death, am unavoidable. I alone am almighty. Not love. Not Spring. Not light.

The world is here. The origins of the world. The end of the world. The heart of the circle. They can’t understand that they rule over an instant and I rule over forever.

In the great hall, the floor was made of night and the torches of dawn.

His tibias, his patellae. His ilium and his coccyx. His ribs, opened one by one for me.

You are lying to yourself if you think I will vanquish your melancholy.

I read in you as if you had welcomed me inside of your skin.

I am here, and you are here, because I answered your cry, and I recognized my mind in yours, and my words in your head. And your words in my head.

I am giving you a burning crown, clawing walls, singing corpses. I am giving you the weakness of a god who let himself, once, suffer like a mortal.

The word feels like poetry and hangs between them for a second. She looks at him and waits.

Tell them that you weren’t hungry, tell them you followed the pomegranates seeds because they tasted like blood, like love.

That you wanted to escape your body and the light because darkness held you by the belly and by the heart.

I will tell them I came for me and stayed for you.