“and we ate our way around the center as if it were a flame …” Courtesy of Quinn Dombrowski/flickr.
The wind had to do with the places we couldn’t touch.
The branches were the places we did,
lying at the roots
with your arms around me. We watched the birds
flock in — a cloud —
and settle. That was before migrating patterns,
the need to keep the sun at the tip
of the wing.
Knowing the body meant eating a piece
of fruit and throwing away the pit.
All around, the soft flesh drew our lips to its sweetness,
all around the veins and threads of pulp made worms of our tongues,
and we ate around the center as if it were a flame
we kept almost touching.
The truth was hard and clear and grooved,
easy to find if we licked the wound clean.
We threw it away, eating around and around
in large ravenous chunks, the flesh giving
over to the tract, the long road down
back into the ground
that smelled like heaven after a rain, saliva strand
at the end of a spit.