Maybe

I Stop Writing the Poem

to fold the clothes. No matter who lives

or who dies, I’m still a woman.

I’ll always have plenty to do.

I bring the arms of his shirt

together. Nothing can stop

our tenderness. I’ll get back

to the poem. But for now

there’s a shirt, a giant shirt

in my hands, and somewhere a small girl

standing next to her mother

watching to see how it’s done.

- Tess Gallagher

(A woman feeds a baby.)

So then Eve gives Adam the apple and tells him to eat it. That apple tree was the only one they weren’t supposed to eat from. The rest was theirs, and it was paradise. But then the snake—who was the devil—convinces Eve she’s missing something.

You know when you decide you want something, and you find out you can’t have it, and that just makes you want it more, then suddenly you want it so much you can’t think about anything else and you’ll do anything to get it? It was like that.

So they both eat the thing and right away they see all the flaws of paradise they couldn’t before. They’re naked, they gotta make clothes. They’re afraid of God so they hide. Sure, sure.

                  That’s a good question. What did happen in between the time Eve took a bite of the apple and when she gave it to Adam? Well, let’s see, if the apple was knowledge, then that means that for a few seconds or minutes or hours or who knows how long, maybe for eternity if God supersedes time, you know, maybe for an instant that became every instant, Eve knew what Adam didn’t know. And maybe—swallow, little one! Swallow!  

                  (Whispering) What if Adam bit into that apple and then knew, with all the other knowledge, that there were a few seconds or lifetimes when Eve knew something he didn’t know. I imagine he might feel the need to prove something.  

I bet Eve got lonely sometimes.