Surrounded by darkness like a full moon

hiding in a black dress of clouds, I came to your country.

I came grand and vast and open like an ocean

waiting for your traffic, your impatience.

I came cloaked in the torrent of words I released

pregnant with the stories and poems we now must write.

I still remember the tree, its large majestic crown

the fruit like shiny jewels, fresh and energizing.

And the quick sudden movement reaching out

to pick the apples, heavy as my breasts.

Smooth and silky they were, transparent and easily bruised

like my skin, my act of sin that startled us to change.

My hands filled with the feeling of a stem

snapped into two and the newness of ownership.

The beginning short and sweet like an evening

rain storm, the warm wind that licks your waves.

I looked for my face in the crowds of the old ship

where I learned difference and found likeness.

The apple was my hunger, my hunger was my freedom

to possess a world where I may become myself.

Some say my gesture was treason, but still it forged

the possibility of this being new again and again.

No more a vision of what you saw when you looked at me

your body revisited, not your stage or door.

I heard the sounds of fire and flooding, the moans

of murder, the plague of fear in the dark.

I invented your loneliness and the silence

you bring to your best friend’s heart.

I knew that if you need something new, you cannot find it

dig it up or trace its scent.  You yourself must make it.

And the creation of the new will be labeled,

avoided, and cast over the wall of love.

I came to your country like a mother knowing

my hand, your hand, the pain of tearing.

I came the way babies come when they have no choice

except death at the wall or funneling the wall.

I came to scrub your streets and teach your children

to show you death so you can live.