Fallen Apple

by Anna Ruiz

I didn’t know then,
when I decided to fall
from that golden-limbed
summer tree, an apple so sweet,
so round and red, so full of
flesh and seed
and lush of light,

I didn’t know then that steadfast
serpent’s hiss
had broken the Silence,
had already cracked open the bowels of hell,
fissures seeping black tongues
of discontent, a wholehearted melancholy
and angst, the Tower of Babel
in a reflecting pool,

I didn’t know then man and woman
knew each other in the biblical sense
his fig tree leaf, her long flowing flaxen hair,
their roots tied to earth, tied to intimate
shores, ecstatic in their in-breath, surrendered
in their out-breath,
the distance of love’s forever flight;

I didn’t know then of the mean-hearted
dark-haired stepmother in purple velvet gown
who would poison me again and again,
leave me to the fates
of jealous gods,

And like Sleeping Beauty,
asleep for a hundred years,
time rests in the memory
of every seed.