Love Poem: All-Encompassing
Hana Ryusaka Avatar
Written by: Hana Ryusaka

All-Encompassing

It’s so simple,
like the hue of oranges,
like citrus in the back of your throat.
It burns.

I want to drag his skin through my 
teeth,
taste the salt trailing
from the corners of his eyes,
lick the genius from the 
slightly-parted, mellifluous quality
between his lips.

I want to drain the green from his 
pupils
and the silken-purity silver from the 
stars, and 
smear it over my face till I 
run red with the rawness in it –
until I am saturated with what I most 
love.

I crave his mind, 
the stormglory-scent of his soul,
the incineration he injects with his 
breath,
the fire-pulse just beneath the 
surface.

I stand beneath the aridity of some 
god-forsaken slice of sky,
and I scream for rain because I 
thirst
and I gnaw my own bones as they 
ache -
I consume myself with hunger –
and I rip my hair from the root,
matted with longing,
but release no internal pressure.

I become a black hole,
a vortex of clenched fists,
cracking flesh,
his name unfurling like the sun
against the curled-paper 
walls of my lungs –
his taste beating
like the oxygen in my blood.