After the sadness of apples in August
gone secretly soft
inside their gorgeous, high-tech skins,
after the thumbprints I left on them
multiplied
in the slanting wall of mirrors above the produce bin,
after they lay still, languishing,
looked at
by someone not-quite-you,
after they were sold to make pies
not love,
after the orchard grass that still remembered them
swelled with bees, and the bees grew sick
of sweetness and even
the queen grew sick of sweetness,
her new generation suspened in apple
blossom
honey so that, later, they complained
the world for them would always be doomed,
everlastingly
semi-sweet;
after the fall, our fall
and the other, after
we'd ripened
in the heat of our one body,
after
we'd tasted us and said it was good,
after we realized we could sell
such a red
as our skins had become by just
touching roundnesses,
after, whan just looking
across the room at each other
we could make the air crisp, make
the sweet places harden,
after we fell into a sleep so smooth even
our dream blushed as we peered out
through its rosaceous skin--;
morning
broke
the truth back into us,
it split us to the core
of what we each had been.