SUMMER FRUIT

I spent springs and summers as a child eating the fruit from a watermelon. Grainy sugar bites and juice slick up my cheeks like a Chelsea smile. My mother used to warn me if I swallowed a seed it would get stuck in my belly and grow a watermelon plant. My stomach would expand till I’d combust. I always spit them out in horror. I spent a spring and summer eating the fruit from the flesh of your lips. The bounty of two round mounds, hard like pink sugar. Your grip on my cheeks with a warm hand holding my mouth open. To drop seeds into my belly. To spit a virus in my throat that grew into a giant “you” plant. The branches crawling up the walls of my insides and begging to claw my mouth open and make me say things I don’t mean. The dying leaves flaking off and swaying to the pit of my stomach in an imaginary breeze landing with a deafening thump. Echoes that bounce up between my teeth. And remind my tongue there is no more watermelon. Just empty space.