I was brought up for some of my life as a Jehovah’s Witness, but found the lifestyle and the whole issue of organised religion too restrictive so left. I have always been attracted to girls but felt as though it was sinful in some way. I read the book and saw the dramatisation of ‘Oranges are not the Only Fruit’ by Jeanette Winterson and this poem is based on both my own experiences and inspired by the book.

WARNING: EXPLICIT AND RELIGIOUS CONTENT

Just
Two young girls
Our sixteen years
Serving Jesus
Sanctimonious
Sacrificial years
Saving our sorrowful
Souls
Unblemished
With the scourge
Of sin?

So why
When I look at you
With my
Heathen, profane eyes
Does my bursting heart
Beat
To the rhythm
Of the Revelation Beast?
Does my mind
Obsess
With wicked thoughts of
Sinful things
Are we less than less?

My sacred sexuality
Comes alive
And my heart
Praises the wanton, fallen
Angels
That are us
We hide our
Youthful kisses
Stolen in the
Echoes of
Iniquity
Lips tell tales
Of lust
And we touch
Down there
And I don’t
Fucking care
If God
Strikes me down
For I lay down
On a bed of bliss
with
A Goddess

And when our
Bodies dance wildly
With the scourge
Of the conniving devil
And our sweet juices
Flow like
Golden nectar
From heaven
And our hearts
Are euphoric oceans
And our love
Is an immense universe
Just for two
How can this
Be sin?
How can this
Be sin?

©2020 Sarah Drury