The Graveyard

Excavating
even her heart opened up.

Digging around, what did she find?
A box of worms?

The apple hadn’t bruised yet,
falling from the tree like a slow tear drop.

Did she find a graveyard? Arteries like tunnels?

There was a well,
but the bucket couldn’t reach the bottom;
even her arms grew tired
trying to reach it.

The vines growing on her body
were fed by that same well.
She pulled them at night
half-dreaming, eyes half-closed, half-staring;
they regarded me like tentacle-arms.

I kissed the apple from her empty lips,
clawed myself back into the shape of a rock:
watching the wind rake the leaves
and regarding, like Moses-arms, staff raised high,
her great body of water
erupting, exposed, and split apart
erotic and final.

There flew from the crevasses of her tongue
a squalling, slow, nomadic notion.
Bird-like, it reached out and felt for the ground.

I wiped its final ashes from my forehead.