‘After We Ruin My Love’s Heart, the God of Annihilation Prays Back to Me’
— Nix Thérèse
I love how surprise is continually cultivated within the contrapuntal, but it’s even harder inside the lyric, where visions must repeatedly turn on their faces. Yet Alabi is clearly up for the challenge: building a compelling god of destruction & a sonically-rich expanse in praise of the disciple that is dedication incarnate. They ask, “how has / the ammonia cloud & rootshred of / your bed, blazing crash site, kept your / hands casket-still, ghost- / cool?” The student rising cold and seemingly unaffected from their incited flames easily draws awe. If the scathing mark of impact often tempers any hunger for extinction, its absence makes this lover almost horrifyingly unchained to the loss. How can you sleep & live in a repelling haze, the roots you’ve snapped not discarded, but scratching your back?
Reverence buries itself in each address of this prayer, the god spellbound by this mortal without concern for those crushed by their throne. “All breath and sweet mud heart earned / you?” posits a vision of their lover as malleable but disposable because even their heart can leave. When faith is called “burnt silk / sweat-drenched slip / the truest skin i know—”, I consider how fidelity finds real manifestation in the body. How many times have I been accosted by mothers to never go out in just a slip, as if it’s only a shallow film thrown over my frame? Offering your bedroom self to the outside air can be the worst taboo, so the sweat adds another layer of intimacy; devotion bleeds into any adornment until its the only reality. The two sides blending into “malware mimicking / cool” also highlights how the virus can lie dormant before it spreads, causing your system to overheat and melt itself into death—I wouldn’t test the cold hands of this “roach king.”