some abstract fruit

Juice tastes like your spit on my lips

It overflows, slides down the point of my chin--

I can see the dirt, the darker spots

It smells like my backyard, like orange blossoms in the spring time

Seeds planted and trampled where I can’t see them

You’d push a softening rind against your mouth and I could see the green skin split against your teeth, even over the phone

Too sweet, a citrus burst; sticky, syrup thick

I like the way the room I’m in smells—like the grocery store, like the produce aisle, like my grandmother’s garden in April or May

Too many colors to count—candied reds and yellows and greens

Smooth skin or lumpy, coiling leaves or the grooves where the squishy parts go stiff

My brother would slip the peels of things against the metal of our deck chairs, little lines of sweetness opaque and gleaming

I could put my hands in any cardboard box I wanted 

"fruit"

"dried"

"canned"

"SUNSWEET"

and pull out a treasure.

I always felt my stomach tighten in interest when the treats came out yellow

As if the inside of my mouth and the soft skin of my throat remembered the color and the feeling

How my teeth ripping and my jaw flexing signaled the sunshine-y bright taste,

a coagulated slip and slide