Sanctuary

There are nights, most nights, where I can feel the phantom hands of the desperate brushing against my skin before I even fall asleep. The ache begins just behind my sternum, an invisible pressure that builds like steam behind cathedral glass. It doesn’t shatter. It hisses. Soft at first, then louder. I am always burning quietly. Incense without fire. A shrine without rest.

I have long since stopped trying to count the number of men who’ve knelt before me as if I were god. I used to believe it was love. Or something like it. Something with breath and blood. Something real. But it was never me they adored. It was the silhouette. The pulse behind the ribs. The shine of something holy mistaken for a mirror.

They come crawling. Always crawling. With wide eyes and trembling mouths, chanting words like need and forever and only you. But they don’t know me. They don’t know the hunger I harbor, the fire I nurse in silence, the altar that grows sharper the closer you dare to touch it.

They think I’m salvation, because I offer light in a world that only showed them shadow. They fall in love with the heat, not realizing the flame burns indiscriminately. They pray to me, obsess over me, call me their resurrection, their holy vision. They whisper my name like a psalm, and I feel nothing but the cold drip of dread down my spine.

I see them, one after another, eyes wet, souls fractured, crawling through the dust just to reach my feet. I see the way their gaze fixates on me, not with admiration, but with possession. Not with worship, but with starvation. As if I were meat. As if I were the last drop of wine left in the chalice. As if I were theirs.

And it hurts. Not because I love them. I do not love all who come to me. I am not God. My mercy is not infinite. My spirit is not open to all. It hurts because they think I am. Because they want me to be. Because they don’t knock on my door hoping to see me; they knock because they want to take something. My body. My energy. My tenderness. My time. My Salvation.

They want to be saved by me, not be with me.

That’s the difference that sears like a brand into my soul. It burns so deep down, past the flesh. It creates a hole for resentment to burrow so deeply into me to the point my burps taste like sulfur.

I don’t want to be a god to many. I want to be a religion to one. A sacred sanctuary where he comes not to beg but to be. Where he meets me in the pews and we pray to each other with our hands, our mouths, our breath. Where he sees me, not the image, not the fantasy, but me. And still chooses to believe.

I want to be a church he enters barefoot. Strong. Awed. I want his spine to shiver from the weight of what we share. I want him to tremble not with fear, but with longing. I want him to worship me in the silence between words. To kiss me like a confession. To fuck me like a communion. To know that my body is not his to conquer, but his to protect. His to love like scripture. Sacred and trembling.

I want to worship him, too. I want to be brought to my knees by his plain presence. To look up with my mouth wide open and my soul even more so. To worship another in equality is a very special gift.

Does that even exist? Can I be reborn? Baptized in the name of Him? Is someone so powerful, so strong, so much my other half that he can will me to kneel?

To trace the lines of his back like they are verses etched by the divine. To feel his breath on my neck like the voice of god itself. I want to be undone by him. Ravaged in spirit. Shattered in bliss. I want him to be my altar, my sanctuary, my end of days. I want our love to be too much for the world, too wide for explanation. I want it to be something ancient. Something that leaves us both kneeling.

But instead, I am followed by pilgrims who demand miracles with their tongues already out. Men who call me holy but would crucify me the second I say no. Men who don’t want me, they want to be consumed by me. And the more I give, the more ravenous they become. Their hunger is not romantic, it’s cannibal. Their love is not devotion, it’s rot dressed up in roses.

I turn them away. One by one. Their eyes full of hope. Their fingers clawing at my thighs. Their knees raw from worship. And it hurts. Not out of guilt. Not out of loss. But because I was never theirs to begin with. And yet they act like I owe them resurrection.

Sometimes I look down at them and I feel sick. Like bile rising behind the ribs. They say my name like it’s salvation, but I never offered salvation. I offer truth. And the truth is, I don’t want to be a god. I want to be loved. Not adored. Not followed. Not idolized.

I want to be known.

Someone is at the gates. And I haven’t told them to leave.

I should have. By now, I should have.

But instead of shutting the doors, I’ve leaned against them, pressing my ear to the wood, listening to the breath on the other side. There’s something different in it. Not desperate. Not pathetic. Not worship out of starvation, but in admiration. Want, yes. But not the kind that drains. The kind that dares.

And I…I…I feel it low. Deep. Between the hips. Behind the teeth. Like hunger, but more dangerous. Like thirst, but I want to drown.

They haven’t touched me. Not yet. But their presence alone feels like a hand at my throat and a mouth at my thigh. Not choking. Not cruel. Just holding. Just promising. Just saying: I see what you are, and I still want in.

I’ve only ever let men kneel at my altar, and even then, I kept one hand on the blade. I let them taste, but never drink. Let them adore, but never enter. Their obsession always reeked of rot, sweet and putrid, sticky like overripe fruit. They wanted to be filled with me, but they never came with anything to offer in return.

I… I find myself leaning forward. Peering through the stained glass with breath caught and lips parted, wondering what he’d look like bathed in my light.

I picture him stepping inside. Quiet at first. Careful. Letting the heat hit him slowly as he adjusts to the glow. I imagine him watching me from across the stone floor, the candlelight flickering across my bare skin, shadows dancing at the curve of my waist and the swell of my breasts. I imagine him drinking it in like sacred wine. Savoring, not gulping. I imagine him taking one, then two steps closer, his breath catching as the scent of me begins to flood his senses, salt and sweat and something darker, something ruinous, something divine.

I imagine him at the foot of my bed, eyes heavy, hands ready, not trembling with need, but anchored in knowing. I imagine his fingers tracing the curve of my thigh like scripture. I imagine his tongue anointing my collarbone. His mouth pressed to my sternum like an oath. I imagine him praying with his body, not for forgiveness, but for permission.

I think I want to hear the sound he makes when I place my hand on the back of his neck and pull. When I say, worship here.

I want to watch him unravel in front of me. Not because I demand it. But because he wants to. Because he has to. Because his hunger is not just for my body, but for my spirit, twisted and brilliant and bruised and too much.

Maybe, if he is grand enough, if he is strong enough to carry the weight of this altar on his back, maybe I will unravel too.

Maybe I will unfasten every holy thing I’ve hidden beneath silk and skin and secrets.

Maybe I will let his hands unroll the red velvet from my hips and offer him what no one else has seen: not just flesh, but fire.

Not just moans, but meaning.

Not just my body arched like a bridge, but my soul, trembling, parted, open.

I’ve never let myself ache like this before. Not out loud.

But I think of his mouth.

I think of his fingers.

I think of him splitting me open; not just wide, but deep.

Not just raw, but real.

I think of him looking at me like I am the divine, and me looking back like he is too.

I don’t know what he wants. He hasn’t spoken. For all I know, he may only wish to linger there, at the threshold of me. He may simply want to exist near my warmth, to witness the glow from a safe, detached distance. But the idea, the mere possibility, that he might want to step inside, light a candle, kneel at the steps and bask in the flickering heat of me… it floods something low and aching between my legs, beneath my chest, in my bones.

I’ve kept the doors of my temple closed for so long they’ve grown warm with dust. I’ve turned away the desperate and the obsessed, the pilgrims who came dripping with false piety and open palms. I’ve stood behind the thick stone and listened to them cry out for salvation, for access, for a taste of the divine, but their hunger was never worthy. Their love was always a disguise for control, their lust a fevered obsession with owning something they thought to be holy. Men who have offered a feast to ease my hunger, and left me starving and bloody.

It’s not subtle, this hunger. It’s not sweet. It claws through me, sharp and thick and aching. My thighs press together beneath my robe, not just to ease the throb but to keep from losing myself to it entirely. My fingers twitch against fabric, not to pleasure myself, but to contain myself. I want him. Yes. But not like the others. Not just to fuck. Not even just to love. I want him to see me, and in that seeing, fall to his knees, not just in awe, but in recognition. And I want to go with him.

Because this ache… it isn’t about being filled. It’s about being met. About finally finding someone whose soul echoes mine in frequency and in filth. Someone who hears the trembling hymn in my breath and hums it back in moans. Someone who understands that to love me is to worship at a dangerous altar, and does it anyway.

I’m not just hungry for touch. I’m starving for meaning. For depth. For sacrament. I want to be fucked with intention. I want to be undone in a way that leaves me whole. I want to be taken like a prayer, repeated, full of trembling and awe. I want him to make me feel like bleeding for him would be holy.

I’ve had this hunger for so long it’s become the lens through which I see the world. It’s why I kept the doors locked. Why I turned away the ones who looked at me with hollow eyes and mouths already drooling. Because their hunger was shallow. Their want was one-dimensional. But mine? Mine is layered and infinite. Mine is sacred rage and sacred surrender. And now, for the first time in so long, someone has stoked the flame enough that I want to open the door.

Maybe he won’t come in. Maybe he’ll turn away. Maybe he’ll prove to be just another wanderer, lost and enchanted by the shine of something he’ll never understand. But maybe not.

Maybe he wants the whole thing, the heat, the ruin, the resurrection. Maybe he wants me, not just the image of me. Maybe he’s here to kneel. To taste. To worship.

Maybe my sanctum will stay empty. Maybe I’ll grow old beneath stained glass windows no one ever looked through. Maybe the psalms I wrote for him will echo only in my own mouth.

But I can’t give myself to the hungry anymore. I can’t pour wine into mouths that only want to swallow and not taste. I can’t let myself be worshipped if I am only being devoured.

I want to be chosen. Not collected.

Loved. Not used.

A church. Not a feast.

I still ache.

Even now.

Even with the promise of something new knocking at my doors.

Even with the scent of his longing bleeding into the incense smoke.

Even with my thighs warm and open beneath this silk.

Even with his name heavy behind my teeth.

I ache.

Because what I crave is not just love.

It is devotion.

It is mutual ruin.

It is holy, yes, but it is carnal, too.

It is him lifting my skirts like a prayer and plunging in like a man reborn.

It is me wrapping my legs around his waist and claiming him.

Not as a follower.

But as mine.

And still,

the door stays closed.

But not locked.

Not tonight.