“The only thing of which one can be guilty of is having given ground relative to one’s desire.”
-Jacques Lacan

Carnations are animals with the wide open mouths. They seem to be destined to make women fall in love, but to find them there, pressed against her chest, turns them into a handful of magical oral secrets.
He looks into his pocket for the ghosts of the flowers. He takes out a blade that that greet him with a platinum smile. The sharp edge of the blade beneath the skirt barely brushes her thigh. A fleeting moan reveals the wound. The sound mimics one of pleasure.

The carnations shudder the same as the legs and the books. She feels the fine thread of blood that seeps from her thighs. Saliva thickens between her lips like the ink that the poets try to exorcise.

She never believed in the books, they never know her. They don’t even know her name. She hated writers. She also hated the dark. She considered him to be simply a body that could dissipate her fears. He was always interested in the bodies of fear that could reveal his own darkness. Both wished, in flesh and word all that books can’t even imagine.

He discovers the path of blood that descends down her leg.“ This is only one more wound. History is to bleed to death.”- he thinks. The petals castaway through the air unable to avoid the gravity of the abyss. Finally the drop of blood faints in the ankle and transforms his tongue into miniature carnations at her feet. They are blanketed by guilt.

*Art by Rubén Rivera, puertorican painter living in California, U.S.A.