Eve rose out of Adam,
simian and unerect,
covered in dust.

She reached out
and held his face
in her thick-skinned

hands, still warm
from the afterbirth,
and breathed.

I see numbness
in your eyes,
she said,
and spun away
in a pillar of flame.

In the ring of
smoldering earth
she left behind,
Adam placed an apple,
fat with the water
of unmade memory,

and as he cried,
clutching ground litter
to his cold, wrecked
frame, the
syrupy sap

from the half-eaten fruit
stretched and soaked
into the ashes
on the ground.