Eve's Apology

by Rayna Brown

It all feels so fresh.
You and I, slick nude bodies, stricken.
I am covering my shame and you
are laid bare and shrunk down to half my size.
Juice ran down our unpainted nipples,
the evidence of our sin between my thighs.
I press, you push.
I smooth, you pick.
I heal, you infect.
It used to be we weren’t failures.
 
Your skin the color of an overripe pear,
freckles the size of dimes,
vacancy plastered onto your pupils,
the size of your hands.
I want you to cradle what is left of me.
Instead, you attack the smooth red of your bottom lip,
feverishly, with the worn enamel of your teeth.
You pull off skin in angry red flakes and swallow,
the naked knot of your throat bobs, recklessly.
 
What you gave me:
Pure and clear and gleaming, first nestled under your skin,
then jutting rudely from between your legs.
You were excited.
Blood spurted near where your navel should have been.
And I became me with a piece of you inside me.
This is all it would take, He said.
It used to be we were part of a perfect plan.
 
Until the scaled one beckoned me to where I was never supposed to be.
And I envisioned your fist in my mouth,
a bite from the tart apple of your palm.
You see, I always thought of you.
What we built, I tore it down
once my tongue rolled with the sweetness.
You were the baby bird and I, your long-suffering mother.
I chewed and fed you from my mouth.
Hot pieces of sin steaming with my breath.
I am doom, the harbinger of pain.
You are a follower, blinded by the ovals of my body.
 
It used to be we couldn’t imagine pain.
But now I am wracked with it.
Your back bent so far your chin touches your knees,
My breasts and stomach distended, skin stretched and marked.
The land gorges itself on our sweat and blood,
Hopelessness is hidden in your muscles.
 
I can still taste the sweetness,
hidden in the flesh of my cheeks.
I wonder if you do, too
but I can’t bring myself to ask.