In the corner of the orchard, you sleep.  I do not go to the orchard while you sleep—body cold in the shade of an apple tree—for fear I will wake you.

How it happens most nights: my restless body jostles you, and I wake to waking you, your fingers around my neck as if I were nothing more than a swallow's bone. Your eyes wide in the darkness.

“Stop moving.” Your sleep-sour breath fans my cheek.

You turn on your side: asleep in moments.

I come to sleep uneasily: pretending to be dead, wishing to be as still.

There were days when you were kind in an aching way like a cavity deep in my jaw. On the nights when you slept and I posed corpse-like beside you, I thought of the first night at the pond. You pushed me, and I fell in the black, starless water—laughing. I peeled off my dress, let it sink below. My body glowed moon-white, the cold water wrapped around me like arms.

I called for you, and you waded out to me.

As we moved together beneath the water, I swore I felt the shadows of the apple trees reaching broken fingers across the dark hills for our bodies.

Sunday mornings I bake the apple pie that will go with dinner.

The kitchen counter: dusted in flour. I am rolling out crust under parchment paper.

My mother, and her mother before, made pies homemade. Down to the apples.

My mother would die knowing I used grocer's apples to avoid the orchard.

She would die at a lot of what I have done. The shoebox funeral I had under the apple trees. The thing I never wanted from you.  Never asked to have from you. This is all the product of loving you.

I take the knife: my fingers navigate the curves of the apple. Golden skin falls off white meat: perfect spirals.

Your fingers curl over the lapels of your Sunday coat while you sleep beneath the tree. A bee hums into the center of a flower beside your head.  I did not know my hatred—my love—would breed poison in the apples you ate: but they did, and now I listen for the sound of nothing from the orchard.

The flour I spread on the table: dust on my apron now.

The spade beside the door: caked mud drying.

The pie crust beneath my rolling pin: thin; cracking under pressure.