Her Hungry Love - A Poem

Her beauty, her allure,
Natural it was in its visionary,
Stunning it was,
for it immobilized my rationality.
Blinded by love, at first sight,
Ever and anon, endless repetitions, endless infatuations,
Drawing the breath from my lungs,
Every single time, and anon.

Her emotioned eyes she showed me,
And her bright white teeth she displayed,
Sharper now in my memory.
She hid her true self away from me,
She hid her real self away from me,
She was never who she was represented to be,
She dwelt in a bright darkness that surrounded me.

It consumed me, or it tried.
I fought it, and I died—
Over and over, a reliving death.
It was a gourmet, and gluttonous.
The gingerbread house in disguise,
Walls sugared with lies,
Sweetness masking cruelty,
A feast built for the consumption of innocence.

Love consumes, if that love is not the loving kind,
But the needing kind, the feeding kind, the devouring kind.
It eats away at the fabric of the mind,
Soulless in its eagerness,
Delighting in its deviant appetites,
Cruelty seasoning the recipe,
Finding delicious its depravities’.

She wrote her recipes,
Not to me, but to herself.
I did not realize it until it was upon me—
Taste-testing as she went along.
Small indignities blindly ignored.

She ate her fill of me.
I died a little more each day,
Until the day I could die no further,
Not without dying bodily.

My soul, my heart, my mind—
Forever scarred by her feedings.
My body scarred by my own hands,
Clawing at eyes, tearing at ears,
Trying to silence the sound,
Trying to blind the sight.
But her feedings were loud inside my soul,
And there were no corners left to go.

I hid myself away from myself,
Casting blame upon myself,
Confessing to sins I never did.

She lied to my eyes.
She lied to my ears.
She lied to my heart and soul.
She lied—and I loved her.

I loved her until I died,
Over and over and over again,
Until nothing of me was left
But husk and skin.

She moved on to fresher feeding grounds,
So effortlessly, she moved on with her smile,
Immediate in her new interest, her new menu,
For who remembers a banqueted buffet?
Cheap, easy, unmemorable.

The eating of me was easy,
For I had been in love.
Even today I do not hate her,
But I fear her smile more than all else.

I pray never to see her again,
But the hollow inside,
Sometimes it dreams it to be.

Her eyes would be filled with love—
Love for me, the banquet.
And I, replenished, might love her again,
Blind and deaf and dumb,
And once again dying,
Over and over,
Until I am gone,
Once again.

Love can be blind.
Love can also be… hungry,
And only nourishment for one.

Copyright December 2025 M. W. Van Dyke
All Rights Reserved