This is everything, I say and hand you the sweet firm
flesh. You finger the pome, mark it
with the crescent imprints of your jawbones and pull
back from it, now halved and weeping, leaving
its tear-shaped remnants raining down pitting
against the skin of your wrists.
You toss the splayed slices onto the opening
ground, eager for core, for within.
Every time you handle me now it will be like this:
A bruising. A hunger.
(The revealing of.
The opening to.
The disappointment in.)
This is everything, you carve us into bark
as the landscape grays in shadow, a deepening
that shades every shared intersection of the arcs of our error.
Something in that darkness breaks and falls as water,
pools in the small spaces between our bright, unfamiliar bodies
and soaks into the skin of the garden blades and torn fruit.
Left out, the once-white pulp yellows and browns.
Billie Tadros is a current student in the MFA program at Sarah Lawrence College.