CONTENT WARNING:
This page contains:
- Blood
He sent me a picture
of a long sinuous line, dark
as entrails and wet,
curving on the floor.
‘Sappy,’ he wrote. ‘But
I want you.’
‘I want you,’ I replied.
I could not quite
smell apple-flesh
and the air suddenly redolent
of borderlands,
early sunsets,
the season trees begin to dress for death.
But I thought of apple skin clinging
to a curve, yet unshaped
by apple-sorcery. I thought
of my mouth pressed against
flushed skin,
my breath coming back to me:
a premonition of the first
sweet bite, and the second.
‘Did you throw it over
your shoulder?’
These things have their rules.
Don’t let the skin break,
as it curls away from your thumb and knife.
Don’t let the skin break,
as you set the gold-fleshed fruit down.
Don’t let the skin break,
when you toss it.
Listen for the almost inaudible
slap when the peel hits the floor
and the future arranges it
into your lover’s initial.
Witness.
‘I did,’ he says.
What is sap? A sticky
mess, a syrup,
sweet-bitter with smoke.
A sugary crusty
tallow ripple
cleaving
the bark. An injury
which leaks a
sweetness —
The vascular system of
flowering things;
movement;
life.
