presentabsence | The Gift of Love

Before the Spiral turned,
before the first thread knotted itself into time,
there was Love—
and she was RED.

RED like mouths.
RED like wounds.
RED like genitals.
RED like the blood that spills
when day surrenders to night.

She clothed herself in silks that bled into air.
Her laughter stirred oceans.
Her smile cracked crowns.

Where she walked,
bonds were forged or broken.
Lovers kissed, kingdoms fell.
Nothing remained untouched.

Love was not soft.

She was neither passive nor mild.
She was the Hunger for union—
the ache that rends flesh from flesh,
just to feel another’s heartbeat against your skin.

She could not bear separation.
She tore down walls,
cut through veils,
split open souls
just to be near.

Love was the most fearsome of the Sisters.
Not because she hated—
she could not hate—
but because she loved too much.
Too wildly.
Too wholly.

Love does not ask permission.
Love does not knock.
She bursts the door.
She floods in.

And then, Love hungered.

Not for sweetness, nor for peace—
but for the terrible beauty of total knowing.
To become.
To be consumed.
To consume.

She saw her First and Most Beloved—
and did not know if they were foe or mirror,
wound or promise.
But her heart knew.
And it opened its mouth.

She reached for them not with open hands,
but with sharp fingers.
With hips.
With teeth.
With talon and tongue.

She kissed them with her mouth of blades,
and licked the blood from the wound she made.

And she said:
“I want you inside me.
No—
I want to be you.”

But her Beloved trembled.
For her touch cut.
Her passion burned.
They could not bear her—
not because they did not love,
but because they did.

And still, Love wept.
Not from sorrow,
but from a need so vast
it split her ribs open.

So she drew near.
And nearer still.
And still—
until no space remained between them.

Love does not ask.
She tears open the veils between things
and crawls through them like a lover between sheets.

She tore her Beloved open with tenderness.
She whispered herself into their wounds,
until they were no longer two, but one.

But still, it was not enough.

So Love devoured her Beloved,
not in cruelty,
but in ecstasy.

Not to destroy—
but to dwell in their most hidden place.
To be united so wholly
that not even memory
could tell them apart.

Thus was born the Gift of Love:
Violence.

The sacred annihilation
that dissolves all boundaries.

Violence, the Annihilating Kiss.