Not by Bananas Alone

"Bananas," she says, as you step through the portal, the screen door with its tattered and torn and rusted screen that you should have replaced fifteen years ago. You pass into a world hostile to your peace of mind, your brooding nature. You struggle for a moment to remember. Bananas you say to yourself, letting the vowels limn the cavity of your palate. You think about the sound and where that sound comes from, how it rises from the bowels of your mystery. Vowels and bowels, you say to yourself, considering ways to tend the fire that is your passion, your leaning toward expression of what you consider sacred. This hungry body, this fleshy vehicle, that consumes and perspires and shits between its errors and its epiphanies, eats bananas; but you know that bananas by themselves will not make you really happy. Nor will the images of her wracked with orgasm caused by the movements of you, beloved, fill the hunger to know who you really are. Yes, of course, you crave the comfort of a warm body next to you in bed, the fire of lust, the heady wine of success. But you remember that those are only superficial reminders of the real fuel for your burning fire. You know you must not put conditions on your love, but rather you should feed the fire of your fullness with all you cherish and all you resist: your generosity, your passion, but also your fear, your brokenness, your lack of kindness to yourself, yes, mostly that. Only then will the fire of your soul shine through you in the actions you take for something bigger than yourself. Even though she is busy, maybe doesn't even care, needs help with the dishes and diapers, you remember that it is you, beloved, who tends the fires, the memory of why you are here in this passing form. It is the bananas that you came for, the bananas.