Manducatio

I set the table. I lay out your wrists,
into the chalice I pour thick, warming blood.
There will be no prayers. Only bodily communion,
where I swallow flesh, to preserve love.

Your pale shoulder becomes salted meat,
I break the thin boundary – the Host on the table.
I will digest it all – veins and time alike,
so that no morsel falls to the black earth.

When the iron taste settles upon my lips,
I will tear through tissues with insatiable teeth.
Clutching your heavy right hand in my own,
I will tuck it beneath my ribs and knit it to my bones.

Then eternity will reveal a simple and fatal thing:
I ate you out of love. And became you, in the flesh.