Flanders, Netherlands (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
You were my food,
my simple nourishment
I fed on your life-force,
your words and deeds
A glance from you
was ambrosia pure
A word from your lips
like blood-red cherries
falling at my feet
I drank you in
like finest wine
from vineyards steeped
in ancient time
Your skin a landscape
to my hunger
And on each day
I’d drunkenly linger
I ate you whole
Consumed your essence
A ravaged soul
Insatiable and grasping
And even though I knew
this was not lasting
Not a lasting source
of sustenance
I consumed as though
the world re-created you
each day
just for me to feast
I was your vampire
drinking blood from veins
you’d sever for me
And on your remains
I’d dwell in ecstasy
as life was drawn from me
You were my food
You meant it all to me
The wily garden snake
gave me an apple
in a perfect, human form
And from the hope
of all redemption
I was gladly, fruitfully torn
You were my food
I ate you whole
You gave your heart
I took your soul
Sweet nourishment
You were this all,
this all to me
(c) Helen Valentina 2013 All Rights Reserved
For mindlovemisery’s Prompt 19 – Food – see the prompt and her wonderful work at http://mindlovemisery.wordpress.com
helenvalentina 
I love that last stanza so clever those opening lines wish I had written them! This is fabulous and do I ever know this feeling! Love is nourishing and essential and like food we can’t go without but like food it can be an addiction! Very clever =)
Thanks so much! Food is such a brilliant inspiration, it is an allegory that works on so many levels!! 🙂
It really does and I am glad you enjoyed =)
Very good – food is such a good metaphor for passion
It is indeed a wonderful metaphor! thank you!! 🙂
I love you so much I want to eat you. Yum.
That’s about it – the poem in one succinct line – well done, and thank you!! 🙂 🙂
“… In the dream
of the poem I haven’t written yet,
I eat them, slurping up the juice;
I’m almost drunk with joy, the fruit
of my labor right there in my hands.”
– Maurice Manning, from “The Hour of Power and the Sassafras Tree,” in The Gone and the Going Away (Harcourt, 2013)
That’s so beautiful! thanks for posting!! 🙂
Helen, my delight in poems of yours which I like stems from the most simple combination of words. Of course, I like this poem for that reason.
Any artist/poet/writer must consider the audience for which they write, when composing their work. It is not “talking down” to use simple words; rather, it may be more difficult and yet more powerful to do so.
Thank you so much!! 🙂 🙂
Love this!!!! And now I want cheesecake. 🙂 Hugs, Sis!!
LOL!! thanks!! 🙂 🙂
Passion and need can be all consuming. I love your use of the food metaphors. “A word from your lips, like blood-red cherries,falling at my feet” is just stunning.
Thank you, that is so kind!! 🙂 🙂
A very yummy poem for the passion we can feel for another.
Thank you!!! 🙂 🙂
Delicious 😉
Thanks!! 🙂 🙂