What was it like for her,
recovering from recent surgery,
to lie down on the red earth
next to the stranger from whom
she’d been recently detached?
With whom she was lately an
integral body part, drawing in,
now, her first breaths of Eden air,
wild with the fragrance of fresh
flowers. Looking down at her lovely
nakedness, did she anticipate being
a mother, every one of us draining
out of her pale body? I ask her:
Do I have your hair, your eyes, your
hunger for fresh, forbidden fruit?
And did you dream, even for
a moment, that your blood
could run rampant in my bones?