Offering

The only one willing to recieve this black ink,
which is my blood,
is this paper.
What will I recieve,
in exchange?

well, I don't want you.

Not a piece of paper, not a passionate idea,
not a book, not a flag, none of it.
Not "a bloodless substitute for"* you, the real you!

If,
you make me sad sometimes,
I still want to love you.
I am not like a whore,
demanding gold or pleasure from your presence.
I don't expect deity of humanity.
I even want you with all your soul-aches.
I even want you with all the dust and tears and blood
which,
mixed together,
form your heart.
I even want you with all your Soul-ly Transmitted Diseases,
(the scars of your mis-directed love).
I want you as you are,
cursing and screaming inside your self-constructed prison.

*Robert Louis Stevenson
Copyright Sothanma 2005