If by you you mean we

Fotografia de Justina Bartling

The apples are early this year, & the grass is late. The taxi is
Early & the past is late. The fist is late. The tooth—like the news

Of the tooth—broke both early & late. I’m telling you: this all
Really happened. I had a love I ripped through like it was bread.

I had bread & cheese, apples & sugar on my every plate.
A sugar rose on my every cake. A love like a water

Ring soaked into the grain of my kitchen table. Sugar, I don’t need it
Refinished. The way it happened, I was my own witness. When we was

Together / everything was so grand. I love you like the fifty-two bones of the feet,
The fifty-four of the hands, the hell & the fast foam from a high-water wave

Smoothing itself toward me like a flu passed through a kiss. I couldn’t
Keep anything down. So happened it was my bread & butter for years

To turn the tables of this town. I didn’t know a morning
That wasn’t the end of my night. I came in through your basement

Bedroom window. I brought a love like two forkless fists stuffed
With lemon cake. A love like the house spider that crawls in

& then out of your open mouth during sleep, leaving only your waking
Tongue & its hustled memory of caught snowflakes from an early flurry.

Amy Woolard