by Hannah Grace Dierdorff
It isn’t the tree—she misses
the
roses and lilies, the does
that
came, thighs trembling, to eat
from
her hand. Sometimes her palm
shivers
remembering their silky wet
mouths.
No garden she tills now
would
ever welcome deer to nibble
carrot
greens and lettuce heads.
Man
with the bow refuses to tend
the
land, and no harvest has come.
At
dusk, he squats or kneels, plucks
and
carves the breast of a dove,
throws
feathers and blood into fire
as if
they never made a body fly.
He
thumbs the two eggs he took
from
the nest and tilts back his head
to
split each orb between open teeth.
Later
he’ll undo the lamb skin
from
her shoulders, finger her white
flesh
with his eyes, and pull her down.
Under
thumb, her body will crack
till
gold bleeds into the earth.
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