The Pomegranate Woman

To be a woman was to be a pomegranate: a fruit of temptation, jewelled with crimson and crowned in mystery.

Her beauty lay upon her surface, gleaming in the light, but to delve deeper was a labour—a chore of stained hands and aching patience. Her skin, taut and unbroken, promised sweetness, but it concealed a chaos beneath, layers of flesh and mess entwined.

The pomegranate women were not meant to be understood by the faint of heart. No, to know her was to break her,
split her open bit by bloody bit, until the red of her spilled into your palms. She was beautiful, yes, but beauty was not all she was. She was a chaos of seeds too stubborn to yield, her juices eager to escape, staining hands, lips, and souls alike. A single taste could leave you aching, a bittersweet tang lingering on your tongue long after she was gone.

Most days, she waited in the hollow quiet of herself, wondering if she was worth the ruin she left behind. Her split flesh was a battlefield of hands that had dug too deep, of fingers that clawed and mouths that claimed. They sought to uncover her secret heart, to find the precious seed of salvation buried within her—but they always stopped too soon. The mess, the red food of her, proved too much.

She remembered how it felt, bursting inside the jaws of their need, crushed between teeth that could not savour her complexity. She was not just a sweetness to be consumed; she was a storm, a stain, a wound they could never wash away. And yet, they spat her out, cursed her for what she had done to them.

On nights when the moon bled pale light into her shadows, she told herself the truth she could not yet believe: the
pomegranate heart she carried was not for everyone. Who would dare cradle her, knowing full well that her essence would burst forth, ruinous and unrepentant? Who would choose to love her for the mess, for the sticky, clinging red of her that could not be undone?

And yet, she knew—perhaps she whispered it into the darkness, perhaps it screamed in her blood—that there was
someone, somewhere, who would devour her whole, unafraid. Someone who would wear her stains like a crown, who would relish her sharp edges and tender wounds.

Until then, she carried her pomegranate heart, broken and bleeding, the mess and the beauty of her a warning and a promise. She was not for the faint or the fleeting. She was for those who would not finch at the taste of red on their lips and the mark of her upon their soul.