Apple Darling
Teagan Fowlkes
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.