[The sparrows keep hurling themselves against the windowpanes]

The sparrows keep hurling themselves against the windowpanes so I place their bodies in dark boxes to soften the shock of it and still it is summer and each day the sun arouses the kudzu in a slow act of violence against the porch where we rapidly close in on a false sense of intimacy candy colored and frantic and I could keep undressing him deeper and deeper in this way like peeling a blood orange pulling at bitter threads for that burst of bright sugar but when he tells me he’s unwell I know I should believe him and still he smells of camphor and night-scented tobacco like there’s a touch of medicine about him and when he feeds me sliced apples from the flat edge of his father’s knife whose heart swelled and burst between smoke-inflamed lungs I take whatever he offers and when he clutches my throat and squeezes I can’t tell you if I’m reliving something awful or if I just want to be thoroughly fucked I can’t tell you why when my dark hair is done drinking up the night he grabs fistfuls and it reminds me of that field I cleared of dandelion roots and sumac though I will say that when we held hands in the alley light while watching a coalition of birds sweep upward I felt some tenderness like there’s something soft and feral in the way we collide in my unfurnished room and it’s true that I could cover the windows each morning and yes yes it’s true that sometimes I want the apple sometimes I want the knife