The other night I had a dream which stripped my lust of its pastel pink and purple euphemisms. I have avoided the word lust in my litany—preferring to tell myself that I crave “an affair of the heart”—further dressed up by such phrases as “out of my deep loneliness and chronic disconnection from others, I have sought soul mates, persons to join me in (at worst) the warmth of romantic fervor.”

Lust is not soft and gentle and vulnerable. It is a tool of power, acquisitive and harsh; a taking of power and control from another, as much by seduction as by brute force.

I enter the arena of battle with my very unsweet lust, to be free of its bondage. I see the enemy more clearly and seek to unseat it, or at least to live more conscious of its danger in my untrustworthy hands.