I thought Love was a gentle woman,
all silk hands
and moonlit songs.

Had she shown me her lion's face,
I would have fled.

So she came disguised as tenderness.

She gathered me into her lap,
fed me honey,
filled my eyes with her beauty.

I saw her everywhere.

In the faces of strangers.
In the wind among the trees.
In the stars.

I thought,
"At last, I have arrived."

The Beloved laughed.

"Arrived?"

And with one breath
she shattered the house.

Walls,
doors,
windows,
all gone.

She tore up the roots
of the one who called herself "I."

What remained hidden
rose from the depths like smoke.

Old grief.

Ancient fear.

The cries of forgotten children.

I begged her to stop.
She kissed my forehead.
And shattered me again.

Beloved,
what kind of mercy is this?

She answered,
"The kind that leaves nothing between us."

So I fell.

Past certainty.

Past identity.

Past every name I had ever given myself.

I fell into oblivion.

And there,
where I expected darkness,
I found her.

Waiting.

Smiling.

Holding the key
to the door that was never locked.

"Oh dear one,"
she whispered,
"you call it oblivion
because you believe you will be lost.

But how can the ocean
lose a wave?

How can the sun
misplace its light?

How can I lose
what I am?"

Then I knew.

The terror was love.

The breaking was love.

The fire was love.

The abyss was love.

And the one who feared oblivion
was the only thing
that disappeared.

Now when the Beloved comes
with her fierce hands,

I bow.

For I know her secret.

She destroys only
what never belonged to me.

And leaves untouched
what I have always been.

Raudri Maria Rippo