Woman

I met her on a train going North,
heaven-bound she said,
so I told her only Eden is ground-level,
as the wheels veered to the East,
that it was not any place for a lady.

When her nails scarred smiles into the Oak
of my headboard, the sunlight
from the square window above us
made her face disappear. She was
every woman at once, a black mystery
where eyes occasionally gleamed,
Reisling colored hair slashing clean lines across
the shelves of her clavicles.

We drank beer from thick crystal mugs,
hers always running from her long
gardener's fingers and shattering
against the earthen-ware tile,
Lead and glass glittering into her veins
as she chewed on a strawberry with one hand
and slowly tugged shards from her skin with the other.

She led me South through vineyards, grapes
purple and moody as they ripened,
her feet red as she walked through rows
of vines, plants moving towards her like a sun.
She fed me fruit until nightfall,
all I remembered was a sunset and fertilizer
burning up through my nostrils.

I was left sleeping in soil, nestled among roots.
Her departure was a trail of grape seeds, raw
and unsown, sparkling fresh and white
as the day rose up.