Osias Beert’s Still life with Cherries (1600-1620)

odi et amo

inextricable

laced like

sweaty limbs

a coiled spring

slotted within

sweet mechanisms

a purple place

hidden rot

like fuzzy fruit

like flushed bile

want your mouth greedy

your neuroses nasty

we’re at home

in our horny gray area

no safe space

hate vibrates

a seductive frequency

your steel skeleton

my magnet cunt

desire’s doppelgänger

antagonym

expired feelings

are a chasm

i cleave to

with guts

your face

a backlit gap

fills me

with nothing

bad vessel

cracked up

i overfloweth

with love

Maura Ford (she/her) is a writer, among other things, living in Chicago. She studied literature at Trinity College Dublin.