Like Adam when he bit the apple, like Cain when he killed Abel, like Peter when he denied Jesus Christ. You are the dark honey, the juicy nectar, the ambrosia. You are the temptation of one who refuses with words but asks with the body. You are appetite and satiety, a winged virgin who carries the curse in her feathers. You are the consummated sin, but always of others. No imperfection penetrates your dark esh. You are. You were. You will be innocence in a pure state. Perhaps it hurts you.

There are no limits to your delicacy or to your condescendence. You have condemned yourself without lamenting it and you know that your con- demnation will never be ful lled. There will never be a heaven nor a hell that can trap the essence emanating from your body. You are a fallen angel in the disgrace of a dark world, black, in hostile surroundings in which there are neither clouds nor nymphs, nor sexless angels. Your heart has been opened and your soul pours out and slips through your ngers as you try to contain it. You didn’t want to be a dark angel but you are ready to spill yourself out as many times as necessary so as not to redeem yourself or surrender yourself to just anyone. At times you give, other times you receive. Perhaps it hurts you.

There is no guilt. Even if they cast you down from heaven to hell. There is no guilt. Even if they wash you in water and mud. There is no guilt. Even if they drag your name in the ground. There is no guilt. Even if they want to cut off your wings. There is no guilt. There is no guilt because no woman has been born capable of forbidding the heart from beating and the blood from pulsing and the skin from feeling; because there is no man who can transform water into wine and part in two a sea that seethes within the chest. And because you well know there is no verb that has yet invented the way to change white angels into black angels. This perhaps, as you well know, is why it hurts you.