Gilded by Forbidden Love by Theresa Gaynord

The smell of blood chills air, a smudge on the horizon, 

she’s but his first destination, pushing against resistance, 

pulsating with tiny rivulets that flow as eyelids flutter, 

like ghostly leaves fallen into sacrifice. 



Faith tests the creator; fear tightens around her, the breath 

of him among a voice so formal, “I love you now, I love 

you immortal, ” interjects with wheezes and moans, the silence 

of a motionless room. 



To cast a spell, a fire, the crackle and hiss; you cannot steal 

anything; you cannot give anything away. Her plasma stains 

hair, touches cheek, it may all be a dream; the way he molds 

her sadness, his fingers but a relief, 



a vision attending to distress. She once rested her body 

in the banks of a cold stream, played reckless games with love, 

where careless whispers danced frantically through vapors 

of heaving earth; 



this Eve, responsible alone for her present condition. The laws 

of nature are set up to fulfill desires, and she desired him though 

the smell of pine, in a land where creatures graze and honey bees 

converge deepening the moment. 



He became her wealth, her sex, her luxury, and she drew it all in, 

adamant in wrapping herself up in his cocoon against the warnings 

of the gods and goddesses. But her morals plucked away at her soul, 

flooding her with illness as evil laughed at her weak debacle. 



The schism within her grew into a battlefield, tearing apart flesh 

with an internal pain that had her begging for death, yet stitch by stitch 

he prepared her for insight, appealing to her shifting nature; a 

love that remained calm with contentment and confidence. 



She nods, begs for his touch once again, gestures for his taste, his lips 

swerving, zig zagging across her face, the tease that swallows sweeping 

motions as shoulders rise up, bare breasts falling conspiratorially; he 

the guardian of all her magnificence. 



Tomorrow, he will deliberately forget her name, ignoring her calls, until 

she turns her back to him as he did to her. These vulnerable moments 

come to tear her apart, affecting the regulation of conflict and aggression. 

Pieces of her will gradually fall away from his protective layer, 



until he is silent and unresponsive, until she is silent and unresponsive… 

the trailing strands, thin, fragile, shall finally snap to awaken his soul, 

depositing fragments in the palms of his hands; she, the remainder 

of what’s left of him, still, to die yet again, in his arms.