love bleed
Pokuwaa and I had our first date at the Taj Mahal, outside the museum. The cacti were fuming but we managed to sip diet cokes over tomato stew and pasta evangelista. It was forbidden to take phones out for night viewing and photos in the main mausoleum, let alone eat in the museum so we had to settle for dinner outside by the candlelight. We could feel the sanctum closest by choke us. The voice of the deep wafted about as I wolfed down her cherry lips hours later. I could taste burgundy, honey and ‘pepre’. I wondered how she could taste so complex yet so delicate, like a firestorm cackling in your belly yet a soft whisper gently cradling your earlobes. Agra was beautiful but it wasn’t enough. It just couldn’t contain us. We were untamed and an inferno of passion. So I dreamed up another location and we wound up on Tartarus. I don’t know how I got there. I didn’t will Tartarus. I willed my patched-up mattress at Nima. I thought we could douse out the flames that were beginning to scorch my heart. Together. Somehow your eyes gave a twitch and now putrid odor filled my lungs. You suddenly turned into coal and fire. You screamed that I’d desired evil and I was to be punished. I had desired evil and was to inhabit the dangers of Tartarus. I was to join Tantalus beneath the fruit tree. I would desire evil till eternity. My pool of lust will recede before my thirst was quenched. I screamed. A pool emerged out of me. It sucked my essence and disappeared. I was still thirsty. You laughed on hysterically, a hunch to your formerly erect back full of lilies. Now hooded in rosewood pink, it was clear you were nothing but shards of cherry wine decanters, fed to empty souls to slice up their lovelorn hearts. Sent to feast on beating aorta’s till your lips bleed with unrequited love.
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Poem (c) David Agyei-Yeboah
Image by jlujuro from Pixabay