Aubade

AUBADE / Robin Behn After the sadness of apples in August gone secretly soft inside their gorgeous, high-tech skins, after the thumbprints I left on them multipUed in the slanting waU of mirrors above the produce bin, after they lay still, languishing, looked at by someone not-quite-you, after they were sold to make pies not love, after the orchard grass that stUl remembered them sweUed with bees, and the bees grew sick of sweetness and even the queen grew sick of sweetness, her new generation suspended in apple blossom honey so that, later, they complained the world for them would always be doomed, everlastingly semi-sweet; after the faU, our faU and the other, after we'd ripened in the heat of our one body, after we'd tasted us and said it was good, after we realized we could sell such a red as our skuis had become by just touching roundnesses, after, when just looking across the room at each other 48 · The Missouri Review we could make the air crisp, make the sweet places harden, after we feU into a sleep so smooth even our dream blushed as we peered out through its rosaceous skin—; morning broke the truth back into us, spUt us to the core of what we each had been. Robin Behn The Missouri Review · 49 ...