Who doesn’t crave exquisite disasters?
Vomit of roses, throat scored by thorns, blood-
red petals fountaining from unkissed mouths.
A heart can only hold so much despair
before its roots thread needles through flushed flesh,
fill lungs with flowers, choke with perfumed breath.
And should a surgeon set scalpel to skin,
remove the seed-hard organ, transplant it—
What soiled pot suffices? What hothouse
could hope to hold such fevers? What far field
could be so fallow, barren, beauty-scorned
that desolation would not be preferred?
Not even hate can wither such a weed.
Longing is the slow bloom that shatters stone.

 

(Editors’ Note: “Eroticide” is read by Erika Ensign on the Uncanny Magazine Podcast, Episode 53B.)

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