“Eros”

It has been said that the insatiable desire is not the poison in the heart or the tear in the eye but instead the fallacy of unfulfillment.
Eros
By Chad Eastman
Artwork by Ryan Cavicchi

It has been said that the insatiable
desire
is not the poison in the heart
or the tear in the eye
but instead
the fallacy of unfulfillment.

It has been preached over and
over that
the need for love
is the impetus to give it,
self-full and unconditioned—

yet,

I can’t even look into the blue sky
of your eye
or trace       the symmetry
of your redwood lip,
wrack my mind, theory, observation
to deliver sharp jokes
and listen to flat song in
your laughter

be     cause:

every tender gift I summon from
within
is bottled by Plato’s legend
and the superheated, molten spring
which burned ever fore and after and
ever novel
in this broken, beaten, rhythm
girdles my throat,
knots my vein,
and leaves me for dead
in the echo of
her silent, sacred space.

My knee shook, my arch ached,
and my spirit mis-took every step
of the climb:
my salt was roman elixir.
I was prophesied to trust
to let go
to jump
and if I’ve come away
from this circus
with the faintest glimpse
of the illusion in a trick,

it’s that I am both the stone
and Sisyphus.

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