In the underworld the air is window-unit cold. The light is diffuse, aquarium-light. It oils me with the sound of creaking ships and I know this is the spot the witch described. The ground resists then crumples like wrapping paper, clamps tight and inevitable around the bark. I cut my palm with a Pilot V5 pen and drip blood onto the leaves. The air dilates. The bough is a tree, a rhyme, a thing that chimes, an inevitable thing. It has always been there. The women have always been there: bovine-women, echo-women, women who burn. Their arms are full of golden apples. The apples full of many teeth. A woman drops from the tree and she is armor, her eyes are full of eyes. I recognize her face. She carries no apples. When she touches me, her hand feels like a mirror. Her mouth is scarred, and when it opens it is full of mouths. I climb inside. Unstitching them takes thousands of years. When it is finished the woman sighs. She shrinks small enough to fit inside the cavern of a heart. I carry the woman inside my body, back to the surface, back to be born.