Venus brings apples in August

Dear Feburary,

For two months during my second semester of college all I ate were apples//I had read on some online forum that apples made your teeth white//That their flesh could baptize your mouth and make you clean again//Make pearly whites look welcoming again//And I read somewhere that apples hate god//And that somewhere a Venus is crying//because all her apples have gone bad//And with every apple an Adam dies//And somewhere a Venus will laugh instead//And lately//I’ve been reading a lot of things//That don’t even sound real anymore//Like my own reflection and the way I say//“I’m sorry”//I’ve never once apologized for my existence

//Sometimes I think apples do//

I bring apples back into hearth and home//Set hubris harvest of their orchards as table centerpiece//Worship her curves and buoyancy at our dinner table//Because I will fill a big mouth before they see me//Fill a big mouth before they wonder//Who I put in there//Who I lay across my tongue//Who I fill between//wet expansion of  undiscovered mouth//Fill this big mouth with apple //       and let me chew in silence      //

I ate them straight from plastic bag//They'd sit small and round in the corner of the fridge//Every time I put lips against a waxy skin//I knew they'd still be good//Still make pink gums numb from cold juice//Their soft curves made mountains in mouth//Each bite a crunch that was left behind in retainer//Their taste lingering on rough tongue//Yet so sweet//I know it’s February but//Is this what summer feels like//right before the wind takes it?//Right before the trees shake all life from their limbs?

I like having summer in my mouth and I won’t let her go.

Have you ever watched an apple die?//I ate mine before their funerals crossed my mind but//Today I look at a dead apple//And I ask//while covering it’s blemishes with the tips of my fingers//Tell me what it’s like to know oneself?//Venus she knows//  She sits crossed legged silently at the funeral// She does not wear black// She does not mourn the holes that open to her// She will ask// When did you notice your core turned black?//You’ve got holes that line your underbelly//What is trying to escape?//Who is trying to get//inside?//Is that why your sides shrivel so?//          

Who do you fear?

Always,       

Fatima