It’s much too dangerous to think about passion. Not the chintzy, wussified run-of-the-mill slag kin to the sappy dronings of today’s lyricists, or the crude rhetoric eternized in tasteless soap operas; not even the sickening popularity of tawdry mantras immortalized on hats and t-shirts. No not these; but true passion, real passion is like a deep, throaty hunger that kicks and rages at your innards, feeding on your convictions until quenched. It gnaws—bathing the psyche in awes and crippling fears—emasculating sense and logic. Yes, true passion bleeds angst and appetite, taking captive the strong and weak alike—its fortress impenetrable. Unrelenting and vicious, it pounds with calloused fists—desperate, hungry—drawing blood with every jab, with every thrust. But you take it. Madly, wantonly, you receive its punishment, its vengeance, knowing that despite its afflictions, you’re wiser—better—for it. Better? Yes, better because the torrid thirsts that lapped at your insides are hidden no more. The morbid hungers that panged in your chest are bared for eyes to see. The furor, the fear, your secrets are out in the open. See them? They’re right there. No, not there; but there congealed in your mangled frame and battered skin mixed in the flow of your hot blood and oozing wounds. There, in passion’s nest—in hunger’s wake—lives your secret, lies your truth: you want it.

Yes, want it. Not in the way one hankers for a meal or a drink or in the sapping monotony of fiends craving the latest gadgets or fashions. No, you want it; not just it but the air of it—the scent of it—coursing through your lungs touching, provoking, subduing you in the inner place—arousing in the secret place—where flesh dare not go. Yes, you breathe and the ferocity of it imbeds itself in you like a parasite boring through veins and sinews, leaving trails of diseased organs in its path. It festers in your midst, tarrying to make mockery of the inner silence that once laid claim to your heart. It is that want—this want—that frightens and entices all at once.

I know what you’re thinking: it’s love, right? This thing, this want, you’re describing is love. Love? If only. Love is little more than a rousing tryst with fervor tinged in affections. Love is kin to the erogenous appetites of the need for camaraderie. Love is the query of the soul for the fulfillment of its existence: to be joined—wholly—to another. If only it were love, then maybe you’d have a chance—a way—a weapon against it; but this is passion. Raw, splendid, ravenous passion; against which there is no defense. It takes captive the raptured and dissident alike.

So, it’s settled. This is not love.

Is it hate? It must be you say to yourself, for hate enflames and enchants all the same. Hardly. Unlike this, hate ravages the eros of the soul defiling its vitality. Hate cringes in anguish, like an exploding heart, leaving only desolation in its wake. Hate corrupts the sanctum of intellect, expunging the foundations of hope—of thought—of power; but this ignites. This entrances and infuriates the psyche—thrusting it beyond the apathy of boundaries and limits.

So, once more, it’s settled: this is not love; this is not hate. This is passion. Beware.