Arrival Elegy

You brought me a grapefruit
and disseminated
its sweet oil. You
said the body
of the horse
had come up
green
after the flood.
You said to stop
playing Apples
to Apples and
calling it tarot.
Nothing
is synonymous,
not even with itself.
An Apple is not
another Apple, no
matter
how shiny,
how red. We
walked around in
our bodies with
their assigned
names, talking
about books
we hadn’t
read, or read
separately,
superficially. It
was not
inauthentic.
Our genes had
been changed
by even the briefest
flipping of pages.
Peeling the grapefruit,
I enacted gratitude.
I said I’m happy
for your greening.
I had clay
up to my calves,
my thighs. A marble
had fallen
onto the dirt
and I made
a character out
of it, assigned
it motives, sent it
flying into the circle
of other marbles
like a word. I said
to you then and I’ll
say again: fruit
is fruit, not fruity.
No “like.”
Only is.
I asked you to tell me
the tale of your
body as I was
just arriving
to it, just
beginning to see
its shape
from the shore.