There is no sweeter innocence than our gentle sin

The living fears how I love. The quiet disapproval lingers when I drag my feet on the ground, feeding the earth of my disease that seems not to cease when you’re not around. My limbs—all twisted and torn—reveal the roots of my deepest desire that only whisper your name in divinity and transcendence, singing praises of your taste that dwells in my system.

Dirty, as they would describe it; it’s unnatural, distasteful on the mouth of the lambs—a sin with no amount of prayer to cure this sickness I have had since I was a child. 

But I was born sick. I was born to claw my heart out of my ribcage—serve it in a large, porcelain platter as an offer of my deepest devotion and worship, all yours to devour and savor until there’s nothing left but the blood it splattered. The main course, which you didn’t have to bargain for, is spread wide for your liking—set to feed the starving faithful, prepared to be ravaged by a famished canine, lapping the meat from the bone where it grew its sharp thorns.

I like not being normal, because normalcy rots my skin. It burns my flesh like a scorched, charred scripture, rendered in deep reds and dark outlines that even Lucifer could fear. The sheer amount of conformity is an inconvenience to the story, perpetually destroying the narrative we carved in the temple—a narrative we could only tell our own. And even if I try other things to keep me sane in the eyes of the pure, to keep me clean and steady, I’ll only spend the rest of my life searching for the chaos that gently held my scarred soul.

I’ll crawl home to you. To where I started. To where I settled. To where it terrifies the being.

Because to not love you is blasphemous. To not kneel in your presence is desecration. To not have my knees all battered and bruised while singing your name is an offense. To not confess underneath your veil is to be damned. To not caress the warmth of your palm is depravity. To not be baptized by the sweetness of your tongue and how filthy it feels on the back of my throat is sacrilegious; not an act of benevolence and propriety.

Everything I do for you is what makes me human; it reminds me of being human—how dirty, how unclean, how rotten it is to be one. How I’m willing to pluck my ribs out of my body, build a shrine in my backyard in an attempt to summon you, to pray for your arrival in my bedroom, where I’ll show one final act of sacrifice. So if they catch us and throw rocks in dishonor, shoot fire in our shed, and bury our bodies, we will die human; and I will die yours.

How guilty I am of a crime called love—an innocence turned wicked, a virtue turned iniquity. 

So if I take my journey to the deepest pit of hell, I’d gladly burn for eternity—because heaven never appealed to me the way you did.

Article: Valerie Acupado

Illustrations: Glaciane Kelly Lacerna