What love, if not mine, could burn as bright?
Rubbed smooth against hesitant skin.
Your bird of prey in wartime flight,
rogue hearts conjoined as twins.

The rituals of bacchanal praise,
wild worship worn in wound,
drunken nights and fasting days,
self-flagellation etched in runes.

Devotion chanted in my head
with every offering made.
From God, I turned to you instead,
the faithless, lustful bird you tamed.

I held on to all I could not save
as you devoured my soul, ignoring my pleas,
ripped my still-beating heart from its unguarded cage
and left me—so empty—half-dead on my knees.