Let’s say Adam
and Eve never eat
the apple. Adam takes two stones
and smashes the snake’s head between them,
and the Lord says, This is good.
Eve remains naked,
and the Lord says, This, too, is good.
Let’s say the snake was a man,
and Adam is a man,
and the Lord is not just a man
but a man just the same,
and so Eve only knows herself different
when she looks into the water
and sees herself, naked.
Centuries later,
you are the only woman in a room
full of men. They are all your friends,
and so there is no fear today, only laughter,
or maybe it’s that the fear is too busy
laughing to know itself any different.
Regardless, they all love you.
You make a joke, you speak of sex
and forget that the sacrifice should stay silent
on the altar,
and all your friends laugh except one.
You joke, If you did that, I would—
and he says, If you did that, I would
kick you in the stomach,
and you are silent,
he says, I would push you down the stairs,
and you are silent,
you remember that your friend is not
just a man but a man just
the same. He keeps joking
and your body remains the joke,
the joke is only as good
as the people laughing,
and the room of men laughing says,
This is good.
You saw this coming, though, didn’t
you? You’ve heard him laugh before the casket,
heard him call the corpse a bitch
like a eulogy, like a christening,
like This is what I name you when no one can hear you
name yourself.
You know this room of men loves you.
Any one of them would take two stones
and smash a snake’s head between them for you,
but maybe the snake is not a man.
Let’s say the snake is a woman. Let’s say
the snake is a bitch,
a beast that bites, whose head creates venom
instead of swallowing it
before a man, in all his laughing fear,
reaches for a stone.
Are you the laughter or the fear?
Are you the snake or the stone?
Or are you Eve, naked, watching Adam silence
the only other voice that sounds like yours?
There are some men who want to love you,
and some men who want to fuck
you, and some who want to bury their knife inside
the meat of you,
and all of them call you the same name
to your face. Good and evil existed before the apple;
the taste only taught us how to name them.
In this story, no one eats the apple,
and so no one knows the difference,
and so everyone goes hungry,
and only the Lord can name the uneaten,
and the Lord,
in his man’s voice, in all his laughing fear,
says, This, too, is good.
