Monologue for an Onion

I do not mean to make you cry.
I mean nothing, but this has not stopped you
From peeling away my flesh, layer by layer,

The tears clouding your eyes as the table fills
With husks, ripped veils, all the debris of pursuit.
Poor deluded human: you seek my heart.

Things have no hearts. Within each skin of mine
Lies another skin: I am pure onion—pure union
Of outside and in, surface and secret core.

Look at you, cutting and weeping. Idiot.
Is this the way you move through life, your mind
A questing knife, driven by your fantasy of truth,

Of lasting union—slashing away skin after skin
From things, ruin and tears your only signs
Of progress? Enough is enough.

You must not grieve that the world is glimpsed
Through veils. How else should it be seen?
How will you strip away the veil of the eye, the veil

That you are, you who want to grasp the heart
Of things, who long to know where meaning
Lies. Smell what you hold in your hands: onion juice,

Gashed peels, my stinging shreds. You are the one
In pieces. Whatever you meant to love, in meaning to
You changed yourself: you are not who you are,

Your soul severed moment to moment by a blade
Of fresh desire, the floor strewn with abandoned skins.
And at your inmost circle, what? A core that is

Not one. Poor fool, you are divided at the heart,
Lost in its maze of chambers, blood, and love,
A heart that will one day beat you to death.