These hands were intended to connect
physical things—heat, buttons, other hands,
fruit. They are rarely able to help themselves.
They have fingernails that break, change colours,
get bitten by the body that owns them.
And this body is a museum stolen from
the universe, a fishbowl with fish-eating
organisms. The apple will always appear
redder than anything imagined. Here is
an illustration of desire: the right hand puts down
the pear—an old breast of woman,
a beached whale—in order to grasp the knife.
If you cut deep enough, you can observe
the heart in motion. This is how the fruit becomes
an ex-fruit, the lover an ex-lover. The laws
of hunger never change. Once the apple
is consumed, the pear is closer to fulfilling a need,
something that is outside itself and moves
in an orderly fashion: one hand to hold its body
still, another hand to remove the skin.