Apples still taste like apples. The funny thing is,
serpents taste like apples too, and kisses and bread.
In fact, it is all about apples, this place. Everything
you touch is smooth and red. Your skin is comfortably
heavy on your bones, like that sleepy moment
between being awake and falling into a dream.
The moon is a pendulum clock, and light from the sun
comes down in drops, as rain. And as any child will tell you,
what we call rain is really tears, the soul of God weeping
over something great or small, as anything with a soul
will do from time to time. Mostly, it is the apples,
and a longing kind of sad. They are firm as musculature.
They smell like the flesh and juice of unrequited love.
Jill Alexander Essbaum's collection of poetry is Heaven (University Press of New England). She teaches English at Concordia University in Austin, Texas.
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