Sermon with teeth | Sreedhari Desai

sermon with teeth

i come out red as a bad idea,
slick with the last town I rented,
and the first thing I do
is tear the air in half.

they say, “welcome, baby max,”
like this is a party,
and not a bar fight
under hospital fluorescents.

i don’t have words yet
but I’ve got lungs...
two little drunks
swinging at the world’s doorbell.

i scream because the light
has no manners,
because nobody told the room
to lower its voice.

i scream because hunger
is the first philosophy:
an empty belly
is a sermon with teeth.

bring me the breast…
not as metaphor,
not as miracle,
as evidence.

milk is the only honest thing
in here.
everything else
is forms and smiles
and fear in clean shoes.

i latch on
like a man grabbing a paycheck
after rent
and the landlord’s smirk
and the bottle’s promise
and tomorrow sharpening its knife.

and then…
sleep.

i want that thick, blind sleep
that doesn’t ask questions,
that doesn’t keep receipts,
that doesn’t remember
what it owes.

I want the kind of dark
that holds you
without commentary.

they call me innocent.
sure.

I just got here
and already I’m demanding
two things and a universe:

feed me
or I’ll bring the ceiling down,
let me sleep
or I’ll haunt your arms
like a song you can’t stop humming.

and here’s the twist,
the small joke
I smuggled in
under my ribs:

you think you’re keeping me alive,
but listen…
I’m teaching you
how to live.

I’m proof
that love starts as appetite,
that peace starts as surrender,
and that the whole grand meaning of it
might be this…

a mouth,
a warmth,
a breathing body
in the dark,

and the stubborn refusal
to stop crying
until it becomes true.