Upstate, Damian

Warns about the copperheads outside the house. Says watch your step. Early apples rot, soft side down, drawing hornets. When he leans in, his taste is spoiled milk and bread, roughly, summer but adolescent. Birches flash. Is that an invitation? He reaches overhead to test his weight against one, unspools his rope, a long, inarticulable thought. You stand there, held in the foreground like the jay feathers and bleached rabbit skulls you once lifted from the creek bed, their draw distinct from the animated whole. If each part of us is an object, is that an invitation? Sun smears your face with its sticky light. His mouth finds yours again, his hands tie knots around your wrists. A branch drops low, a game suggested. Hard to tell which player claims power, who concedes it. Your deliberate breast, the curve of your ribs demand one thing, his rooting fingers another. Where he touches, he must touch you. Whatever he touches, you give it up.