I asked,
“What if the sun is a colossal gummy?”
amber and tremulous,
suspended in the citrus-blue cathedral of sky.
He said,
“It would have been harvested.”
I imagined ladders piercing the stratosphere,
men with golden shears
clipping the day from its stem,
wrapping it in waxed parchment,
placing it in crates labeled perishable.
I asked,
“What do you think it tastes like?”
He closed his eyes,
smiling faintly,
and said,
“Warm and gooey, tropical…”
He tilted his head, letting the words roll off his tongue,
“like pineapple, orange, and mango.”
The flavor dripped into my mind,
sticky sunlight running over my wrists,
clouds dissolving like spun sugar,
the horizon melting into nectar.
Perhaps that is why evenings bruise so tenderly.
Someone has taken a bite,
pressed teeth into the radiant rind,
left crescents of absence across the sky.
And we, small orchard-keepers of wonder,
stand barefoot in the grass,
palms lifted,
waiting for sweetness to drip back into our mouths.
If the sun were a gummy,
we would call it abundance,
we would call it hunger,
we would call it childhood,
sticky with astonishment.
But it remains unharvested tonight,
burning and benevolent,
a sugared god of citrine fire,
flavoring our shadows with gold.
And I like to think
that somewhere inside its molten heart
is a pulp of mango-bright hope
refusing to be bitten.
Mar 2
Mar 2, 2026 at 9:29 AM UTC
I asked,
“What if the sun is a colossal gummy?”
amber and tremulous,
suspended in the citrus-blue cathedral of sky.
He said,
“It would have been harvested.”
I imagined ladders piercing the stratosphere,
men with golden shears
clipping the day from its stem,
wrapping it in waxed parchment,
placing it in crates labeled perishable.
I asked,
“What do you think it tastes like?”
He closed his eyes,
smiling faintly,
and said,
“Warm and gooey, tropical…”
He tilted his head, letting the words roll off his tongue,
“like pineapple, orange, and mango.”
The flavor dripped into my mind,
sticky sunlight running over my wrists,
clouds dissolving like spun sugar,
the horizon melting into nectar.
Perhaps that is why evenings bruise so tenderly.
Someone has taken a bite,
pressed teeth into the radiant rind,
left crescents of absence across the sky.
And we, small orchard-keepers of wonder,
stand barefoot in the grass,
palms lifted,
waiting for sweetness to drip back into our mouths.
If the sun were a gummy,
we would call it abundance,
we would call it hunger,
we would call it childhood,
sticky with astonishment.
But it remains unharvested tonight,
burning and benevolent,
a sugared god of citrine fire,
flavoring our shadows with gold.
And I like to think
that somewhere inside its molten heart
is a pulp of mango-bright hope
refusing to be bitten.
