Monologue for an Onion

I don’t mean to make you cry.

I mean nothing, but this has not kept you

From peeling away my body, layer by layer,

The tears clouding your eyes as the table fills

With husks, cut flesh, all the debris of pursuit.

Poor deluded human: you seek my heart.

Hunt all you want. Beneath each skin of mine

Lies another skin: I am pure onion–pure union

Of outside and in, surface and secret core.

Look at you, chopping and weeping. Idiot.

Is this the way you go through life, your mind

A stopless knife, driven by your fantasy of truth,

Of lasting union--slashing away skin after skin

From things, ruin and tears your only signs

Of progress? Enough is enough.

You must not grieve that the world is glimpsed

Through veils. How else can it be seen?

How will you rip away the veil of the eye, the veil

That you are, you who want to grasp the heart

Of things, hungry to know where meaning

Lies. Taste what you hold in your hands: onion-juice,

Yellow peels, my stinging shreds. You are the one

In pieces. Whatever you meant to love, in meaning to

You changed yourself: you are not who you are,

Your soul cut moment to moment by a blade

Of fresh desire, the ground sown with abandoned skins.

And at your inmost circle, what? A core that is

Not one. Poor fool, you are divided at the heart,

Lost in its maze of chambers, blood, and love,

A heart that will one day beat you to death.