Realities

She pressed the cherry into my hand,

Smiling, it didn’t mush,

Didn’t leak red juice all over my summer-calloused palm

Like fake blood, too bright to be the real thing.

I still imagined it, though, spreading across my hand

In its red brilliance,

And I imagined

Washing it off with the hose,

The places where the juice had ran across the lines in my palm–

All those creases and swirls turned a reddish-pink–

And so I stood there thinking about that for a while,

That alternate reality that I was sure existed somewhere, 

Deep within the folds and crevices of a million other Julys

That could've easily replaced this one.

I think I looked like a fool,

The tiniest of smiles on my face,

Caught in the haze of imagination–

A soft, distant, purple place that is–

And then she was smacking my arm,

All blue-green eyes and freckles and laughter

Asking me if I was going to eat the cherry or not.

So I did, and it tasted like

Summer, fleeting and tart,

But I couldn’t help imagining

The reality in which I hadn’t eaten it,

In which I’d shaken it off my hand

And stomped it into the dirt.