Violet

The first time I spoke her name,
Rolled it around my tongue,
The first time I imagined
The feeling of her warm skin under my fingers,
Brushing the fluttering moth-wing of a violet skirt,
I apologized.

But to whom?
To God, to my mother, to Her and Him?
To Them and ALL of them.
To the jokes thrown off tongues
Like green carnations landing at my feet,
Floral grenades blazing through my soles,
Through my soul, my heart burning,
With my name
And hers.

My memory teems with violets, blue-tinged purple,
Pushing through cinder block cracks of abandoned
New England factories and derelict farm silos,
We two lolling on the school field,
Grass beneath our bellies, the fall overhead,
Autumnal flames descending,
Languidly,
Frenziedly.

The Garden of Eden waits above the twisting snakes in my liver,
Where Adam and Eve could have remained, strewn under dappled trees,
Finding names for a new world, blissfully unaware of the smooth fruits
Hanging above them like the bosoms of women,
If Eve hadn’t dared to climb, to reach,
To take a bite out of the warm, speckled fleshー

To hell with your Garden.
I’ll eat as many damn fruits as
I want.