Page 139 of Wayfarers

“Sylvie,” Knox says. “You hold your heart right out in front of you. It’s a good heart. You wouldn’t want anyone to die.”

After the way I’ve treated him today, he can’t possibly believe what he’s saying. “You don’t know that,” I tell him. You don’t know me at all. “Come on, get in the van. I need to tell you something.”

Knox Tree of Knowledge

I remember learning the story of Adam and Eve

in Sunday school with my mamaw when I was little

and being perplexed at why God would want

them to live without knowledge, as innocent children—

because I didn’t know the ways

that knowledge is sadness, it seemed cruel

to me to withhold it, like God was refusing

them ice cream or something.

I feel inundated with knowledge

today. Not like I ate of the fruit

of the Tree of Knowledge, more like

I sat down at the Shoney’s All-You-Can-Eat

Breakfast Buffet of Knowledge

and accidentally gorged myself to aching.

Somehow, my trying to kiss Sylvie is

not top of the list of what I’m ruminating on,

not after she drew back the curtain

and trusted me to be the first to see her life

in all of its sorrow and messiness. I don’t know

yet what that means but it must mean

something. There’s the second part of the story

of Adam and Eve. Where they eat the fruit.

And their eyes are opened. And they’re exiled

from the Garden and learn

of death and struggle and the myriad ways

that this world breaks our hearts

to make us wiser. And maybe