I’m in love with a boy named Adam.

He picked my heart from a tree,
arbitrarily.

A thousand other apples,
and he woke up beside me
though he had no memory, naturally.

And on that night
--our first night on this Earth--
when he held my heart in his infant hands,
all red and floral-scented,
I believed we were fallen stars.

But he told me
we were made of dust
which still could not explain
the flowering bruises
or why he could not recognize
our brothers and sisters;
so we slept instead of talking
--my first dream was of stardust--

In the morning we took showers
under the sun, examining each other
in this new light
so unlike
the black and blue of midnight.

We glowed.

And ever since that first sunrise
while running through the orchards
Adam’s been looking upwards, at the leaves.

And every sunrise since, I’ve been telling him
“Adam, don’t go looking after apples
that aren’t your own--
you’ll end up with your heart inside your throat.”

But who am I to speak
what with my own slithering eyes?

To know would be to go astray
and yet I digress, I transgress
and the sin, it is sufficiently sweet.

And I know it now, that when I die
the stars will not;
the parachuting apples will rot with confidence
and I will meet my death with grace.

After a life of these recurring garden-bruises
red and blue will come together, of arteries and veins
like a heart that beats perfectly
in spite of all the trauma,
the vulnerability of the thin pericardia we’ve sewn.

My heart is an apple
it’s fallen once or twice
onto the ground, into the soil
where it has nestled into decomposition--
only, I’ve found that God has a way of
reversing gravity when it suits him.


And so back on the tree
I
am
again.