The Need

I. The Arrival

It came not soft, nor clad in white,
But draped in dusk and hunger’s grin;
A shadow stitched from candlelight,
With gospel smoke across its skin.

No name it spoke, no vow it swore,
Just breathed against the chapel wall,
And every inch I locked before
Unlocked itself to heed its call.

II. The Whisper

It tasted like a violin
strung tight with nerves and sugared pain,
It hummed beneath my darker skin,
A hymn of want, a wet refrain.

It asked for nothing, only more,
And kissed with mouths I never grew.
It left its scent in every pore,
Like frankincense, like blackened dew.

III. The Ruin

I fell, as all the saints have done
Not screaming, no, I fell in verse.
Each strophe was a loaded gun,
Each rhyme a gasp, a velvet curse.

It pressed a temple to my breast
And turned my hips into a flame.
I died, I rose, I could not rest
I loved the beast, I loved its name.

IV. The Gospel of Skin

This was no love you write in ink
No moonlit pledge on meadowed stone.
This was a want that made you sink
Your teeth through lace and down to bone.

It clawed the pearls from grace,
And fed me figs laced deep with sin.
I wore the bruises on my face
Like rubies worshipped from within.

V. The Benediction

Now nothing touches quite the same.
No man, no god, no lesser fire.
The Need has scorched me past all shame,
And left me hung, a thing of divine.

Let doves coo peace, let poets kneel.
I crave the dark from whence it came.
The kiss that breaks, the hands that steal
The Want that dared not speak its name.