Sinner

I

Soft flesh bruises easily

tomato-red and overripe

opens

to spill, in runnels,

a warm mirage.

Delusions

never reach

parched lips, but

taunt and I love

the torture

enough to eat

the dust of this

wasteland.

At the gates of Eden,

I thirst,

a sinner barred

from forbidden fruit.

II

Scents of rot are sweet

at first,

syrup-thick and

magnolia-cloying.

They linger, soft

as slime, to stain in

gentle streaks

the sunken fat of this

wrung body.

Just east of Eden

even the dirt smells of

sugar. The flies come

to pick at it. To pick at

my bones. To eat of dust.

There is too little

moisture for maggots—

Still, they try.

The awful reproductive

consumption, the

drive that kept me

at these gates

kills them too, so

my body and fly

bodies and the

bodies of other

damned

are mummified

before the lovely mirage.