How To Eat Fruit

Standing over the sinkshe bites into the peachand for a momentthe fruit remembers her mouth

the oval left behindholding each tooth separately

their impressions preserved in the fleshwith a fidelity her body hasn’t learned to manage

for her jaw has already forgotten

the arrangement the peach remembers

Around the bitethe skin continues moving backwardswithdrawing from the edgefoldingexposing more fleshthan was taken

The fruit arriving from itself

A revelation of brightness that seemed impossiblefrom the outside

as though the peach had spent monthsprotecting a colourfrom the air

At the lowest point of the wound

something begins

A slight thickening aching to become a droplet

a gathering of whatever sweetnessthe fruit can no longer keep

It remains therefor 7 seconds

attached

accumulating itself

until its own weight becomes impossible to ignoreand gravity enters the scene

Then the slow descent

Not a fall

Never a fallThe droplet lowers itselfalong the inside of the wrist

with such patienceevery hesitation becomes visible to the bare eye

At the wrist bone it pauses

Gathers another trace of itself

Continues

        Changes shape

   Narrows

The wrist is not smoothand the sugar has already begun dying

The skin tightens around itso that the wrist becomes stickybefore the hand understandsit has been touched

Another bite

The peach turnsHer thumb never doessteady through every alteration

The fruit becomes difficultto describe

Each mouthful redraws the border

New inlets

Small coves of exposed flesh

The peach accumulates coastlines

It becomes less fruitand more record of her mouth

At the corner of her moutha strand of hair drifts forwardand catches in the shine of the juice

For 7 secondsit belongs equally to her face andthe peach

She finds the strand

Place it behind her earand return

The kitchen remains silent

The refrigerator is bored

The sink waits below

whiteand patientand bleached

receiving nothing yet

The fruit continues changing.

One side disappears faster than the other

The borders collapse inward.

And at the centre

something dark beginspressing toward visibility

The pit

Waiting inside the fruit

with the patience of stone

Every mouthful has merely beenthe removal of concealment

It feels abruptand she flinches

Suddenly there is less peach than pit

The flesh clings to it

in bright remnants

The fruit that entered the kitchenno longer exists.

What remains

is a hard centre in the sink

a faint shine at the corner of her mouth

a wrist drying slowly in the air

and the smell on her fingers

which an hour later surviveswith the peculiar persistence

of a thingthat has misplaced its body.