I now measure my life in apples

because they last the longest

out of all the fruit in my kitchen.

My friends tell me I’m fractured,

severed at the edges, cornerless.

I tell them I love them with all my pulse,

and that apples rot on the insides

first. I’m reminded

they couldn’t find us before

they found us. The ones who bled

on behalf of beetles the boys tortured

at recess. Their dismembered slices

reattached to my flesh –

became my skin condition,

my dry-heart eczema,

my peel-away war wounds.

I am round and biteable,

and my figure curves into more

of itself, the way the world works.

I descend into a sutured Antarctic

clinging to the ascension of things.

I go in circles.

I decay the same black

as beetles and heartbeats and

boys who know all the angles.