Apples belong to the genus Malus. I stand with my hips pressing into the sink’s marble, rinsing and twisting these sandy, gunmetal stems out of the fat fruit
I found a black snake on the porch, its body so still I didn’t dare breathe. Lungs arrested, I might have left my body then. It was long, a rope I could Double Dutch, a tilde underneath every word I try to love differently.
Swifts do not guard their time; they do not linger. When they come back from Africa, we are happy. I was told to go back to Africa. The sea, that stupid slate wedge, sparks with such beauty. I feel lonely. A car goes past,
My dream daughter is chopping onions. She has been chopping for hours, slipping off the skin like tea-colored lingerie, slicing them thinly like the rings of some beloved planet.
I cannot remember the last meal I shared with my father. Only those long last nights slipping him what ice chips he could still stomach and then swabbing his chapped lips with a wetted pink sponge.