on peeling an orange

there’s a sort of violence about it,

a slow and sweet-smelling psychopathy

which would have otherwise remained anonymous

had i let the orange be an orange,

but immediately it was not just an orange,

it was my orange,

and that was the door.

i heard hunger’s footsteps in the hall

and made haste to take my time,

held the fruit up to my ear as though it were a conch shell

and i might hear the orchard on the other side.

i listened for the sun, for the chlorophyll

snaking through the veins of the leaves,

for the quiet song of gravity.

i listened but there was no sound,

no orange blossom unfolding,

no seed turning in the womb of the earth,

only my own appetite leaning against the

skin of my fingertips.

then suddenly

there was an awful sound like murder—

a crack in the door, a wound,

one white thread of light whispering

enter, enter,

and i could not stop myself,

slipping my thumbnail underneath

to pry peel from what was precious and mine.

i could not stop, but neither could i ignore

how the tangerine so resembled the moon,

all cratered and curled in on itself,

intact by some partial gravity, perhaps hope,

perhaps fear.

i swear i felt the fruit flinch.

i considered, then, that if the orange was the moon,

then i was a black hole,

obsidian mouth hinged grave-wide and lip-glossed,

like i imagine the gate to hell would appear

were it decorated like heaven,

studded with stars like pearls,

perhaps sores,

regardless, the dark vision was sufficient

to still my hands.

i set the half-dressed orange before me,

beheld my waning gibbous,

my waxing remorse.

it appeared so small, so childlike

there in front of me,

and i’d never felt so vast and starving in my life.

i felt like a man, a lowercase god,

somebody who doesn’t say sorry.

apologetically, my fingers resumed their work.

tell me, is this what it felt like?

enjoying me in season,

delicate in your tearing me apart?

did you hate yourself as my threads snapped?

as the parts of me let go of one another,

rocked back into the crater of your palm,

some of me scattering across the floor mat

on the passenger side of your Toyota Prius?

do you loathe yourself, still,

every time you talk with your hands,

or stroke your beard,

catching in your nostrils

my citrus-scented memory?

now, with the sweet acid of clementine

in my throat, i know what it’s like to be you—

eternally hungry, afraid of your own hands,

drumming to the music your intestines make

inside your body, as though

dinner is not already on your kitchen table

where your wife prays that it’s not true,

that you won’t come home with

yellow fingernails and flattery

that reeks of me.