Love bomb
2026
Oil and acrylic on linen
31.5 x 31.5 in
At the very top of their tower, two figures embrace. Behind them, a coral mushroom cloud blooms above the sea. Ecstasy or annihilation, the blast has already occurred and the shockwave is imminent.
The woman can be read as a possible metaphor for planet Earth, and the man for humanity. He blends into the concrete of the balcony and the city below. What he has built will disappear with him: railings, buildings and cities, everything will be atomised. Not a trace will remain.
Love Bomb also evokes love bombing, love relentlessly imposed, overwhelming and destabilising. The mushroom cloud becomes a phallic form; the pink wave, ecstasy. The man disappears into the woman’s shadow, without our knowing which of the two carries the other away when the embrace, or the relationship, reaches its climax.
Finally, and above all, it is humanity refusing to see. From the supposed safety of their height, believing themselves invincible, humans turn their backs on war and carry on with their futile lives, absorbed in one another. The world may burn: “After me, the end of the world.”
Love bomb
High above, at your summit,
beyond the neon lights,
you shimmer,
beautiful slender twig
glittering with irradiated sparkles,
in the summer blaze.
Beneath the weariness of a world running out of breath,
you embrace me and curl against me,
surrendered.
You melt into the concrete
and fade into my shadow,
on the balcony.
The waves break far below,
against the mosaic of the city, its pigments washed pale by the surf.
It is the end of the day over the Pacific Towers.
My hand, gleaming metallic, comes to rest on the nape of your neck.
Feverish beneath the pink wave,
your breath comes in cascades,
and you drown in soft cries,
in osmosis.
At its climax,
the blast sweeps away your joy.
You are thrown off your axis.
Climax.
You dissolve
into the railing
and merge into the mass,
atomised.
Pulverised,
you disappear.
Not a trace remains.
Sophie-Gaëlle Martin • 2026
