Walks around the garden

Tiny knives of grass press

the soles of her feet,

their green backs lifting and sighing

while a wind twists its fingers through,

Just like…

She looks back to where the Garden used to be

but doesn’t dwell there long.

Lightly touching now-gray monoliths,

trunks she used to know as evergreen,

her feet stumble

on ground cracking like chapped lips,

their names draining away

in the crumbling yellow

and auburn of absent leaves.

Fog dresses the way back to the tent

like an endless curtain,

until epileptic orange contortions interrupt,

frolicking blades forming visions of Seraphim

and bringing her cheek to the mud.

She must have found her way back to the entrance again.

But Adam reaches out and brings her inside the thatched roof,

Fire. That’s what he calls it.