by Maja Kuzmanovic

Pain crawls through my body, devouring my flesh. Transforming the organs into receptors of your life energy. There is no I any more. Just a net of polyps, as communication channels between the earthly and the divine… And while my body is mutating to accommodate all of you, it tears my desire apart. It structures it, forcing me to leave my existence, and proceed on a journey through my own being, in a search for all the dispersed particles of my desire for you, my twin. With every pulsation of my bodily fluids, that depart from my veins and orifices, I loose strength to mingle with the screaming light yellow beings, that appear everywhere around me. Laughing. I am in peace with the loss of my ego only when fused with you, bodiless.

Under the radiating sun, and above the sharp rocks, covered with my blood, the distances begin shrinking into a moment, curving the space and delinearizing the time, and the heavens descend into my womb… filling the void. I reached you. You made my interiority pour itself under your feet, my being dissolve into fluids, yearning to multiply by drinking the whole of you. Of your knowledge. Of your beauty.

Leaving my life, as a dried out reptile skin, to melt under the rays of the burning sun. Leaving a trace of my shapes on the white rocks. Dripping into the cracks of Earth. Poisoning the waters with my visions. And all the people drinking the waters from the deep earthly springs will be infected with my fertile desire, and all will dream of you, the unpronounceable.

My soul warps the fragments of my desire into an image of you. A shadow of liquids, I wrap myself around you and slowly disappear, as your heat evaporates my fluidity. Instead of an abundant stream, I remain visible only as sweat drops covering your translucent skin, but I exist as the raising vapor, the unity of your heat and my transcendence. Leaving the layer of condensed steam on every surface in this desolate city. Flooding the deserts around. I drink your sweat, becoming fluid again, gliding over your rhythms, envelop you in shadows and humidity. Underneath the sweat, your shapeless body is carved with your knowledge, and I become your humble pupil, absorbing the symbols of your world through every touch. Kissing the words, remembering your thoughts in my streams… rushing away to be your voice, singing your world as I crush the stones under my waters.

The Earth listens. I calm my current, and breathe. Deeply, a breath of affection, a breath of life. She offers me the melted shell, in the form of my boneless body. I can feel the pain calling out for me. I hear your distant voice fading, as the space uncurls and becomes bright and solid. I rush into my mutilated shell, reasoning the act with mundane thoughts. Scheduling existence in Cartesian space. Our fluids still caressing. Every caress a flame of pain. The pain of remembrance… Yet the distance became greater than my mortal life can comprehend.

I embrace my decayed being, collecting the tears of suffering and delight in a stone crack. They dry up instantaneously, leaving the drawing of salt picturing our love on the gray stone. The crystals mirror my soul, opening it to the world. I fall on my knees and gather the salt on my tongue, tasting the last traces of you, hiding you from the light, as this light would hurt you, and so would the people.

The people are burning me in the flames of my love, and rubbing your salt onto my wounds, until the dead fabric of my burned skin peels off the flesh and hangs sadly from my limbs. I am punished for being desired. It was a sin to search for you, and to make you find me. I didn't follow the rules, didn't proceed according to the manual. I left the society behind, and followed my own path. the one I knew would lead me to more of you, faster than any of their rules could. My thoughts released through the fire, trying to ignore the pain and the disgust. Seeing parts of my organs turned inside out makes me sick. I look inside the depths of my body, finding nothing else than chunks of meat, tasteless and unworthy. I feel the shame arising from the depths of my soul. Humbly, I lay on the ground and await my well deserved torture.

My being is exhausted by the worldly demands, spread on the hard surface, emptied of the lust and the longing. The people left me alone, after hours of questioning, blaming and hurting me. I still breathe, summoning the Earth to love me once more. To wash my wounds inside her liquid core, filling my bath with the glowing rivers of lava. Slowly, the surface breaks open under my weight. I tumble downwards, bouncing off the rocks. Their touch becoming more liquid as the time passes. The matter envelops me in its orange movement, and I disappear, melted with the burning stone. Waters screaming, heaving, vanishing. Tumors bursting. Space compressing, time converging. The pain! The breath.

As I breathe out, I open my tortured eyes and catch a glimpse of you. Of your shapes. I have screamed your name in my head, silently, so that the world wouldn't hear. The time was passing and I began to think that you abandoned me. That the path I chose wasn't leading to you any more. And now, on the edge of existence, when the afflictions of my being became unbearable, you came back. Your eyes glowing in ecstasy, in purity, through your rewarded love, through me. Your touch cools the burning streams around my body, and you wash my suffering away. Cracking my burned, troubled shell open, penetrating my interiority and disinfecting my disease.

The pain reappears, but it is a pain towards which I strive. It is a pain that opens all the channels and fills my being with immense pleasure. It is the pain of knowledge, of adoration. The pain that leaves me in a bliss and returns to me in the moments of my weakness. Now, I share this pain with you. Inscribing it into you with your own divine blood, that leaps as little brooks under my nails, as I cut the syllables of pain in your skin. Decorating you with my pain. Sharing my distress. And as I read the words flowing down your body, I surrender my forces and await for the bloody rivers of revelation to reach the source of your power. There I drown in you, forgetting to breathe and you loose yourself in me, becoming the image of a double oneness. Dead to the world, born into eternity. Without carnal longings, without rational goals, without emotional traps. Feeding off each other, as two joined waters, in an everlasting discharge of our energy.)