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.
