The apple tree is far too honest with its harvest
Whereas a lime tree relies more on faith
A droll kind of tree
One full of doubt
She examined the fruit
Some were ripe and some were rotten
She felt nervous with the truth
It was hard to tell which from which
Without plucking that lime from a switch.

I know the good and the bad of it
Where the pendulum has swung
And where it intends to swing next

My body is filled with the knowledge of it

Poisoned marrow mixed in my bones
With a fresh prescription of penicillin
An invoice sitting on the coffee table waiting to be paid

My hand hovering over an overflowing astray
Holding a half smoked and forgotten about cigarette
A dust pan prompted against the stool it’s on

My growling liver eating the contents of my wallet
Leaving a receipt from the ABC store clinging to the condensation
Moistening the bottle of left out ***

This feeling of post apogee
The silent deafening moment
Of situational actualization

The view from the tipping point that lingers just long enough
To still see every vantage point, the good and the bad of it all.

As of late I have felt less like a person
And more like the aftermath of a shattered glass
My body’s innards that were once safely trapped underneath skin
are now sprawled out across the kitchen floor
And the smaller pieces slipped into tiny dust ridden cracks that a broom can’t reach
The parts of myself that used to be neighbors
Have been forcefully relocated to different continents
And no longer recognize one another
It’s exactly like dropping a glass
When the circular base of it
Bounces and shatters it looks like a small jagged crystal crown
Perfectly shaped for house mice
Some mouse king might wear it like I use to wear
My heart.
A symbol of power- of knowing that
If all else fails I have this heart, this crown
So when people look at it they will know without a doubt
That I am good and I am deserving
But now with that piece of my body separate
From my other organs I am not so sure
Being so broken the only hope of reconstruction
Is in that dust pan in the closet
And as it collects my dangerous little shards of organs
I’ll pick up the bigger pieces with my hands
And hope that my blood is thick enough to act as glue.

The time will surely come any day now
When I walk up to the front door
When I arrive I’ll knock feverishly, almost impatient
And from the inside I’ll hear it; I’ll turn the **** and open the door
I’ll greet myself and we’ll smile at the recollection of ourselves
We’ll sit down at the dinner table
And talk candidly of memories we share
We’ll eat and drink, I’ll pour another glass of wine
After I’ve politely asked for more, and added “this is delicious”
I’ll excuse myself early and I’ll understand as I give a kiss goodbye
Then I’ll shut the door slowly with a wave between the crack
I’ll wave back and backs against each other we’ll
Walk back to our separate lives lived in separate times
Knowing that surely the time will come again when our stranger past
Will knock at our door to recollect our shared collections of time.

There aren’t a lot of things in this world that make me truly happy; in fact upon further reflection, there's nothing at all that completely does other than you, things merely distract me from the inescapable fact that I've been perpetually lonely my entire life up to this point. Only the thought of you distracts me long enough to make time without you bearable, to make me hold on just a little longer to see you again so you can fill the void in my soul that has been eating at my stomach since you left. I love you like this. And when you aren’t around me images of you age backwards in my memory and comfort me to the point of almost wholeness and at the same time a vast emptiness. Knowing that thoughts of you aren’t the same as your lips on my forehead and that they don’t fix the loneness I tend to align myself with without you here. When you’re gone I stick my hands in my pockets more. I thumb the hole in the bottom of that fabric feeling for the last penny to my name and realizing that it slipped down through that whole, through my pant leg, onto strange and unknown ground. That is something like how I feel without you. Like how I can remember touching you at some point and wanting to hold onto you for dear life but the second I let go, you fell through a hole that I couldn’t follow you through. So now I am penniless. That is the most heart sinking feeling. Being so lonely that my heart swells with heavy emptiness; it falls through my body down to my feet and I am forced to stomp on it with every step I take. Each stride squeezing out more and more blood so that by the time I have walked miles to see you again I pass out in your arms.  I tell you, “Lovely to see you again, I missed you so much.” Then I am happy and whole again.

We were told we were born sick
Though we never felt ill
We met in Sunday school
And over the coughs of other children
That hacked out either verses or mucus
It was never clear which
I asked you for a paint brush
And you stepped over the damp tissues
Thrown defeated on the ground
Like offerings at a precession
And you’d painted next to me.

We were told we’d always be sick
But we never looked ill
When I accidently bumped your elbow reaching for
More paper
Our blushing cheeks the color of alter wine
Bore healthy smiles and warm glows
And after countless more Sundays
When the men in funny neck ties
Came around to give us crackers
In the shapes of pills we couldn’t swallow
We decided to hide them in the sleeves of our robes
And we watched as all the other children
Grew sicker while we grew stronger
Even though they drank blood
And we’d sneak off to drink wine.

We became the heretics of hallelujahs
AWOL archangels
And we were never bed ridden from illness
In fact we yearned for the outside
Disregarding the warnings of germs
That ran rampant there
Figuring that was why they made the
Church’s steeple look like a needle
We wanted freedom nonetheless.

They told us that we would catch the flu
By holding hands
And when we were caught contaminated
They told us to wash our bodies off in the water
And you looked at me and I looked at you
And we agreed that we should-
But not this water, not here
So we grabbed hands again
And you with your free left and I with my free right
Pushed through the double doors
And as the light poured in the chapel
It scorched the priests but for us it baptized us whole
And now we tell ourselves swimming in the sea
That became our holy healing water
We’d only ever be as sick as others let us be.

In the Deep South
There is always a woman
In an apron calling out to her kids
Warning them to hurry in
Or the corn bread might get cold
The kids couldn’t care either way
And at their age
Food doesn’t taste as good as
The marshes feel around their ankles

They’re just young enough to be nourished
Off of adventure alone
With sticks in hand
Grazing the tops of half-way grown
Up to their heads wheat

In the Deep South the outside
Is still the Wild West
Where you can walk a few blocks
From your front yard
To deserted boulevards
You can’t but a greeting card
From.
And among all the untamed
Nature and desolate fields and lakes
There is so much space
For kids to create

In the Deep South
Kids see broken down Chevys
As breeched kingdoms
Open fields as battle grounds
Littered with rocks that look like grenades
Every vacant marsh a ****** planet
Where you use overall clasps
As radios to your fellow astronauts.

Why would anyone be in a rush
To come home
To something so real
As Mama’s cornbread.