Eve's Garden

She was made from a bulk of white stone.

Her first crutch to lean on, an IOU.

Laid and lying on borrowed ground,

knotted and gnarled, the sweet fruit

on a vine ripens and drops,

A castaway. Too drunk, too disorderly. 

You have poisoned the well, father says. 

You have made wolves howl with that

red mouth, a near-rotting apple.

Banishment was like flesh hitting the wet pavement,

 followed by the tang of vomit and rain.

Next came a lullaby of pain that longed 

to shred the moon apart, and take a hammer

 to the smiling piggy bank, swollen with rusted pennies. 

Now? The husband cradles watermelons

 against her belly. The husband 

expects her to inflate, like a balloon. 

What she wants is to run, unlaboured, along the 

garden path. She craves the caress of nettles

and the tongues of thorns. 

Her garden waits for her. Quietly, lovingly. 

The soil will hum against her hands,

whether it is watered or spilt. 

Before dawn, she will stuff herself with straw 

and stitch potato sacks into her skin. 

She will stand alone against the 

eager, thieving crows.