garden of eve — Samantha Joaquin
poetry ☆
poetry ☆
In the middle of Eve’s garden, she stands,
adorned in bohemian cloth and open wounds
where the earth has taken its due from her flesh.
There is a calling I pretend to refuse,
a pleasure in testing humility
when reverence is written over decadence.
I confess the predecessor of my greed into
the mouth that no longer answers back.
They say prayer unlocks all
steadfastness within abstinence.
But consumption does not knock with mercy.
Its fasting strips the mind of wholeness until
restraint feels rehearsed.
To say I want to find myself upon her hands again
is a confession of my instinct
to what undoes me.
My mouth. My body.
More and more.
Again. Again.
I have once stepped inside that garden,
never lost, never winning,
against the battle of what you call behaved.
It is not by name I stand before the statue,
engraved in my skin, feeding me in flesh.
If heaven were to watch my godless faults
fall against the promises of her skin,
it would call it worship of flesh—
while devotion sits improperly,
itching against the walls of faith
as a borrowed disguise.
Still, I cannot catch myself in time when I kneel
at the pedestal below her feet.
The weight of the world drapes itself upon my
shoulders, rakes through my weakness,
asks me what it is I want to lose
as if loss has not already chosen me,
as if greed were not grief wearing my face.
Draining the core of my passion serves no absolution.
For it is not the statue seething in my palm it is the
undoing,
the fruit of man’s oldest violence:
to love what must not live untouched.
So when I gaze like a drunken majesty
at the architecture of her body,
the temple in which all invigorating wine lies,
ardency plates doctrine in silver
and I cannot tell
if I am worshipping
or drinking.
Samantha Joaquin hails from the Philippines and is a self-taught artist and occasional writer pursuing her love for the arts while aspiring to become a psychiatrist in the future. Outside of school, she takes pleasure in bringing her thoughts to life—whether on pen and paper, through melody and voice, or in digital media. Emotional, sentimental, and reflective themes often recur in her work. Alongside her in all her endeavors is her white rabbit, a reminder that gentleness and simplicity prevail in the world when paired with deep thought and sweet moments.
