Before Morality

Before language,

there was hunger.

Not for food.

For possession.

For power.

For the trembling moment

something living realises

it belongs to you now.

I think that was the first prayer ever spoken.

Not to God,

to desire itself.

Because something ancient lives inside the body.

Something older than morality.

Older than mercy.

You can feel it sometimes

in the split second

between impulse and restraint.

The worst desires

do not arrive screaming.

They arrive intimately.

Wearing your own mouth.

Your own pulse.

Your own voice

whispering things

the soul tries to recoil from

a second too late.

A hand around a throat.

Not always violent.

Sometimes devotional.

Teeth against tenderness.

Love contaminated

by the urge to consume it completely.

And the mind...

the mind

opens for these thoughts

so naturally

it becomes impossible not to wonder

what existed in us

before morality.

Before shame.

Maybe that is original sin:

not disobedience,

but consciousness itself.

The moment the human mind

became aware

of the monstrous cathedral inside it.

The wet red chambers

full of unspeakable cravings,

rotting guilt,

holy longing,

and thoughts so dark

the mouth refuses

to carry them into sound.

Yet they remain.

Breathing quietly

beneath every beautiful thing you do.

There are fears

that feel almost erotic

in their depth.

The fear of being powerless.

The fear of being truly seen.

The fear that if someone reached far enough inside you,

they would find something ancient

and kneeling there.

Something starving.

Not for flesh.

For surrender.

For ownership.

For the unbearable intimacy

of being able to destroy something beautiful

and being trusted not to.

That is the horror of it.

Not the darkness itself,

but how holy it can feel

for half a second.

How the forbidden thought

does not feel foreign.

It feels remembered.