There was  a  longing  in the carvings of the knife my mother held against the fruit. She peels with quiet permission. It is the only thing she can eat right now.  The  apple  is shy, red only in  spots, still  alive without its season. Earlier in  the day,  I  ate without touching from a tree– some hanging  game  with  my hands tied behind my back, the  apple stalk noosed  by  a single white  thread, and my mouth snapping to catch the fleshed body at sway. Grossed heavy in spit and juice, all  that  is my mouth drips down my chin. It sugars the dead leaves of autumn fall, dampens the soil enough for it to hold close my drenched voice.  I  am  the animal,  my  mother  my beast. I am licking the oceans away, howling off this distance, scavenging  for gratitude  on shadowed  days.  On  my finger lies another finger: a soft brown hook clinging like a seedling to  its  earth, an adjoining to a fractured limb and bone, a  root inseparable from its origin.