before there was shame
there was hunger
and before even hunger
there was silence
the kind that waits to be broken.

before the first word
there was the sound of teeth closing on fruit

I was there
neither angel nor beast
just the pulse that asked:
what if there is more?

the sky was soft as a wound then
and God walked barefoot in the heat of the day.
he looked lonely.

when we met,
I did not lie to her.
I told her what the light could not bear to say
that knowledge is a kind of death,
and that death is holy.

she lifts the apple
like a question
no one ever dared to ask.

when her teeth break the skin
the world learns
what it means
to bleed for beauty.

her eyes opened -
two black suns
the garden held its breath
and the silence broke
like a bone

when God came
the air turned to glass.
he called her name, but not mine
he never speaks to what he fears
and I
I crawled beneath the roots
listening to the thunder of her tears.

they say I was cursed
but I have seen your centuries
and I tell you
it was she who became divine.

every prophet that bleeds
every lover who bites
every dream that turns to ash
that is my tongue
still speaking.

you think I am gone
but I am coiled in your voice
in the quiet before you sin

i am the memory that says:
you wanted this.

the garden rotted from the inside out
Eden was never lost
it was devoured

she walked away
with the taste of me on her lips
and I watched her vanish into the dusk
radiant and ruined

now the stars hang low
like fruit left to rot
and the world prays to the sound
of my breathing

do not ask for redemption
It will not come
the gates are guarded by angels who envy the fallen ones

I am the serpent
I still sing to the dust

there was no sin
only the hunger to know
and that hunger

was God's first child.