It is September and there is no love

cleaner: apples red as a ribbon

knotted around the white dove’s

broken neck. As schoolchildren,

we were brought into the orchards,

biting into Empires and tossing

what we didn’t want, told that

we always can. I grew too tall

too early, and still, in mazes built

of hay, pretended to not already see

the routes to all their naked ends.