Your half eaten apple lies
rotten—
a mutilated carcass—
in our yellow fruit bowl.
I can’t throw it out,
this oxygen-infested fruit,
because you still breathe
within it.

And I haven’t picked the fruits
like you’ve asked me;
your sun-burn
apples and oranges still hang limply
from their branches in our yard;
waiting…
         as I wait,
                  for your hands.

Eighty-seven fruits
still breathing,
still living,
though you’re gone.

The trees outside have shed
ninety-four leaves today.
Inside my head,
countless summers
have collapsed
upon one another—yet I am still here,
still breathing—
since this afternoon
when I laid your body
among the roots of those fruit trees,
and kissed your smile good-bye. 

The earth, and all her warm sorrows,
she gets to hold you now.
And I am still here,
still emptied,
         still breathing,
                   still living
though you’re gone…

by: Samantha Lê

___

First published in Corridors, Chusma House Publications 2001.

©Samantha Lê. All rights reserved.