My heart
was the last red fruit to

fall from the low-branched
wild plum

tree when you
let slip what seemed

to me
a great injustice:

in another universe,
we would be lovers.

A stunned
‘o’ shaped my lips

as the ripe plum
dropped whole

in its bony cage.
A pent-up, female sound

I did not make
I heard

when the lush
blossoming thicket

shuddered,
sighed.

Kylie Gordon graduated from Stanford in 2002 with a BA in Modern Thought and Literature. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing from Northwestern University.

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