Bitter Fruit
Leslie Young

You enter the crack of my closed eye
by force, as a knife between two planks, prying.
I sigh, find the rise curl of your back,
the skin smooth under palms and smelling
of new soap, the slope of your shoulders stark
and cutting sweet teeth. You are the old mold,
the form I answer without reason–the completion
I didn’t know would hold. I see
you without eyes, with only fingers
and the nerves inside my thighs. High tide:
just the shape of your arm
can break me, make me chaos,
make me shake the tree, make me
bear bitter fruit.