Meeting Madri

A door creaks open, a serpent-breeze coils itself around her ankles.
She has crossed her feet, curled her toes.
The mattress has two depressions where her heels have dug in.
The paint on the walls is peeling off, like the skin on the inside of her thighs.
The room stops breathing, braces itself in the darkness.
In the moonlight, she can see his amorous eyes.
Outside the window, a raven’s croaking frosts the air.
He lies down beside her.
She hears the discordant notes of his polyphonic wheeze, the murmur of his scarred heart.
His calloused hands know their way around, stop at soft spots, and follow the undulating terrain.
He is a withering rose emitting a rheumatic fragrance.
He had kept his cardiac condition a secret.
His arrhythmic ardour reeks of betrayal.
Her body turns to stone as his every pore lights up.
Her struggle is his aphrodisiac.
Ecstasy could be his— ruination; hers, too.
To love him is to lose him.
To add fuel to his fire is to turn him to ashes.
His doctor’s warning is analogous to Kinadama’s curse.
To mate is to die. Now or soon.
She wants but is afraid to want him.
His urge leaves her without choice; she gives herself over, commits a crime against herself.
Lust is hard to stop, love, harder.
Her body becomes a seismic zone.
Through her sweat and his wetness, she holds her breath and waits.
In that conjoined eternal nanosecond, when fear and hope play tag,
when bliss could be a coital nightmare, the world opens and closes.
In that blink he inhales, his heart pounds on her bosom,
and in the throes of the invasion as relief washes over her,
she cries a little, flies a little, dies a little.