Blackberry Market

There is food at the edges
And drink
You will be welcomed here
With a guest’s gifts and obligations
There is the safety of the haunted dark
You may trust that all you meet would eat you up
Your flesh, perhaps, or dreams or vivid hungers
You will see the white shine of bone, know the smell of your viscera
When you offer yourself, there will be no taint of pretending
No fumbling in shadowed places, eyes watchful, shame gnawing in your chest
Meet me at the brambles
Allow the jagged thorns to catch the edge of your illusions
Give gladly the cost, made piquant by the ripeness bursting on your tongue,
the rich bitters of your sure defeat
In that sweetly sated longing