The Cinnamon Peeler’s Wife

after Michael Ondaatje

After the morning swim, we pull our bodies
            from the stream and walk into the soundless
                        woods, the cold settling on us like skin.
                                    On the forest floor, the sun-stretched shadows
                        of trees, their boughs, strange and flickering
            in the wind. Following you into the deepening
dark, I arrive before an evergreen: white
            lichen flowering on its earthen trunk, its leaves,
                        thick-veined and tapering. Picking a small
                                    knife from the waist of your sarong, you slash
                        from the cinnamon bush one thin branch. Shaken
            like the leaves startled back into place, I watch
the branch in your hands: how, once scraped,
            its outer bark falls in curls of green moss, revealing
                        within a smooth saffron. And how, as you rub it
                                    with the butt of your knife, the insides loosen,
                        gathering around your touch. The sharp vertical
            slit like a lip on its stem, the weapon suddenly
slipped in and spun. A yellow bark skinned,
            how I peel in your hands.