September 2022

September 2022

The girl says it’s an anniversary.

Root words, annus, Latin for ‘year,’ and versus, Latin for ‘turning’.

I did not ask for a definition. I did not ask for anything. Not the apples from her apron, not the bedtime stories, not even the gutters which so desperately need cleaned. The ideas of August are over and I’ve never had or known or been a mouth. I cannot be a mouth. I get what I am given. I open. I close.

The girl says it’s an anniversary.

Root words, annus and versus, human bodies and human concepts.

It’s been a year, she says, and I don’t reply. But windows are open, and the air is sweet, and we smell a bit more like each other.

An anniversary, she says, is different from a harvest. She explains to the goldenrod moon when she thinks I’m not listening. The year is an arbitrary measure, just marking laps in space with math she can’t track in markered tallies on the window.

It’s the versus, she says. Latin for ‘returning’, she says—because she already forgot. Is all turning returning?

It’s the versus, she returns. The lemongrass (dying off and growing back) versus the ivy (ever present and crowding the patch). The sink versusthe dishes. The leaf versus the fall. The old way versus the new. Me versus you. Is she turning against me, or returning to me?

Neither. We know better now. It’s been a year. The bark dropping down and soon the hornets coming back. The girl looks at her split ends, at the dust on the stairs, the way her feet have found a familiar path, a dance she didn’t mean to learn.

And a dance we do on purpose. She puts on her sixth best dress and takes off her make up and lights me up for the night, to match the moon. Warm. Glowing. And dancing as well as a house and a girl can do together.

Turning into each other.

Me versus you, she says. Happy anniversary.

the apple house