before the beginning, the tales tell, there was one-in-many and many-in-one. two-sexed, many-sexed, hands caressing, opening, closing, each finger unfurling, a flower in flesh. vines, we curled into each other, over and under, the fronds of hair and limb, fruiting and sweet.

what there was not was all-one-ness. what there was not was desire.

for what was desire, when every fruit we dared pluck dangled in reach, nodding sweetly, for the tree limb was part as we were part? when the river that was our blood rose up for us to drink? what was desire when we were always in embrace, always touching, making love, one flesh? what was desire when every need was met before our asking by every other part?

some say the Gods were jealous, lacking our worship. that they took sharp sticks and pried our bodies apart, separating us as so many worms squirming in the dirt. and they bade us build temples and churches to them, to offer up the necessary sacrifices with the holy fire so that they may be fed by our hunger, loved by our lack, our need.

but i do not believe so. for they had created that eternal coupling, of which they were part, as we were part. so one would assume -- but it was long ago.

whatever force pried us apart, the act was done. for the first time, we shivered, cold after half or more of our flesh had been sliced, excised, surgically removed. we felt hunger, as the trees were no longer part of us, and no longer bowed their boughs. the river no longer anticipated our thirst, and we learned then to cup the water with our strange paws -- a bundle of flimsy sticks, fragile, a strange whimsy.

thus was born the individual.

and we turned, seeing each other then, for the first time -- amputated limbs all, bled dry by the surgery. we opened our arms, rushed into embrace, crying always, "will you make me whole again? will you make me whole?"

thus was born desire.

but the barrier of flesh was too strong, and skin thrust us back. we rebounded, atoms in orbit. the moments of merging were just that, moments only, half-swathed in illusion or homesick memory. and the cruel gates would crash shut inside us, all iron and rust.

but we could not help asking; the question drove us, a wicked engine, coals under our soles. "is it you? you? will you make me whole again? will you make me whole?"

asking, we embraced one another and then turned away. we built their temples and churches, made the sacrifices. we built schools and hospitals, empires and engines of war with our asking hands. with the lathe of our being, we turned all we could touch into the image we thought would fulfill us and wept -- secretly, in darkness -- when it did not.

and so. i sit here, curled with cold, wanting what i cannot have, giving in to the malaise of my hunger. perhaps it is the memory, half-faded, in all our genes.