To Nadia, Apple Continued

I throw the apple at you, and if you are willing to love me, take it and share your girlhood with me; but if your thoughts are what I pray they are not, even then take it, and consider how short-lived is beauty.

—Plato, Epigram VII^[21]

Dar Nopple,

Here is my face: I am
the apple's black drama, I am the
bird's red digestion.

I cut my teeth on her ovary,
ground up the seed coat,
coated my tongue in bitter
cotyledon, drowning a promise
in stagnancy.

Here is my grimace: strung up
in petrified strands on a
dead tree.