The Orchard Between Us

I carry you like a fever

under my ribs, a secret orchard

where the fruit splits but never falls.

Your hair is wheat burning in wind,

your mouth a door I was never meant to touch.

The blood we share

is a fence hammered into the soil,

a rule older than language,

and still my heart stutters against it,

like a moth that bruises itself

against the glass, again, again.

You laugh, and the air

trembles with a sweetness

I can’t swallow.

I rehearse silence in the mirror,

press my lips to their own shadow,

pretending it is you.

What a cruel architecture—

our veins braided from the same thread,

our names sewn into one family hymn,

and yet my desire glares like a lantern

in the attic, wild with forbidden light.

At night, I dream you unbound,

a country without borders.

I wake to the sting of daylight,

to the iron taste of no.

Still, in the orchard of my chest,

the fruit swells, unplucked,

aching with your name.