A Cheesy Love Poem

by Taylor Turner

 

Gouda that melts like wax

Provolone, a pallid moon

Mozzarella stretches like sinew—

a body begging to be devoured.

 

Gorgonzola—damp and blue-veined—

it smells like the inside of caves

it smells of rot and

decay, of forgotten sins

the musty breath of ancient tombs.

I eat it anyway,

let it rot sweet on my tongue—

It’s milk gone wrong—it doesn’t care.

 

Hard cheese crumbles

between my teeth like bones—

and yet I always

go back for more.

“Tonight, my darling,

you and I will melt.”

 

I grate Parmesan and let it rain down

like snow from the heavens—

the flakes divine sparks

and the salt a bitter kiss of betrayal.

 

O blessed fermentation, O Goddess of inclination.

I am not worthy. Yet I consume. I gorge. I swoon.

 

I dance with Camembert in a hall I call home

I relish every morsel, my crumbs do not spoil

I worship here, in the citadel of curd

fingers glossed with the sweat of Gouda

my mouth a cathedral—

dark, humid, cavernous—

made only to receive.

 

I could weep. I do. Parmesan dust

gathers in my nails, a relic of my sins

and still, I hunger. Still, I peel the skin

skinning it clean as though

exposing its very soul—

creamy, crumbly, carnally divine.

 

When did cheese become my religion?

When did I start attending the gospel of Gouda

genuflecting before the triple-cream altar?

I never signed up for a cult, but here I am

smearing my faith on crackers and calling it dinner.

 

Did Moses not split the Red Sea like I split

the casing of a Camembert, rind splaying

like lips, like promise, like loss?

 

O Feta! O Brie! You Mistress! You Goddess!

Take me, Gouda! Break me, Havarti!

Let my heart throb as a pouch of Burrata—

ripe, quivering, begging my blade.

 

I am yours. I have always been yours.

And when I die, cover my corpse in Gruyère

lay me to rest beneath the stench of blue-veined bliss

Let the worms lick Brie from my bones

and etch on my tombstone: “Here lies the fiend

who lived, loved, and died for the cheese.”

 

Thou art my muse, my heart’s only squeeze

for nothing compares to my love of cheese.