DB Graves’s Reviews > A Dowry of Blood > Status Update

I wanted to hold your power in my mouth.

I was tired of having the air sucked out of my lungs every time your eyes cut right to the heart of me. I was tired of the whole of the universe living in your circled arms, of the spark of life hiding in your kiss, of the power of death lying in wait in your teeth. I was tired of carrying the weight of a love like worship, of the sickly-warm rush of idolatry coloring my whole world.

Desperate, vulnerable. Fear for your life made you look like a man who could really love and be loved, like you might hand over your heart and all of your secrets without me having to crack your ribs open to get to them.

I craved you like maidens crave the grave, the way death burns for a human touch: inconsolably, unrelentingly, aching for annihilation in your kiss.

I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence, and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong.

We've waltzed through a hundred tiny apocalypses, you and I, walked unharmed through the ash of countless crumbling regimes. We feast on the ruin of empires...

136 - the cycle of brutality and tenderness
137 - Like Christ, I had become intimately acquainted with the violence and sins of this world, but I had not come away unblemished. Violence felt like holiness to me now.