The Clementine

I love this twilight time, my shoes off, jeans on,
the sun settling pink and warm into the arms of the trees…
and I hunger, not for food, for my
appetite has evaporated in the summer heat,
but for the poem that has been simmering all day
in the humidity at the back of my mind.

I reach into the refrigerator for something cool,
and finding a Clementine orange, I begin peeling back
reluctant skin unwilling to give up its sweet, juicy wedges,
colors of a waxing rising moon, which wait beneath.

As the juice begins to drip through my fingers sticky and cool,
the words begin to flow in the same slow trickle,
until the acid of the juice finds the tiniest wound,
biting down hard on a paper cut in an unexpected burning sting.

The words stop as I stick the painful digit in my mouth,
sucking the sore spot clean to ease the hurt.
I taste the faint essence of orange oil on my injured fingertip
and in that fraction of a moment, I recall the taste of you,
the sweet stickiness of your juice when it spilled through my hands
and the stinging burn of acid on wounds you made
which could not be kissed and made better.

The poem in my mind vanished at that instant,
dissolved in the summer heat and sudden pain…
just like us.

© 2007 Inner Beauty