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The kitchen smells like a secret I forgot to bury.
A peach gone soft, skin splitting like a bad promise.
The fruit flies know something I don’t;
they’re the last priests of a dying faith,
and they’re waiting for me to leak.

I tell myself I’m healing,
but last night I dreamt I had to eat your heart to survive.
It tasted like burnt sugar and nail polish remover.
I woke up gasping,
your name soldered to the roof of my mouth
like a curse I didn’t mean to cast.

I call it the trick of wanting:
how I keep looking for your fingerprints in places you never touched,
how I flinch when someone says my name in the dark,
how I let the mirror watch me shatter
and pretend I’m a stained glass window.

Here’s the part I shouldn’t post:
I liked it when you lied to me.
I liked it when you said this isn’t about love
and I let you mean it’s about power.

The fruit flies keep coming.
I pretend they’re a sign from God.
I pretend they’re angels. Or demons.
Never both.
I pretend they’re a reminder that sweetness
is just another word for rot.
I pretend the buzzing is the sound of my name-
fermenting in your guts,
putrefying in your chest,
decomposing in your memory like abandoned fruit.

I know I shouldn’t write this.
But I do.
Because I want you to see it.
Because I want you to flinch.

Because I want you to know:
I am the girl who would eat your heart if I could.
I would peel it open with my teeth,
lick the blood off my lips,
smile like a god in a red dress,
and call it love.

And you’d believe me.
Emery Feine May 27
i was born and on fire. my skin, open flesh words that bled onto anyone in a close vicinity. my face, a cloud of black dust. i knew that i had love in my heart to share with the world, but no one could see past the mold on my skin that would spread to them if they got too close. i was born into two things: a fruit that appeared ripe on the outside but leaked out a decayed, rotten mess, and the hands that opened said fruit with blood that held on. i watch the destruction i've made, that i didn't mean to make, but i believed that it was justified. i wait for someone to understand these words, not to pity me, but to find a part of themselves in me. i have found nobody. i fear that as of now, i am a walking, moldy model of decaying flesh and raw meat. i did not want to be this way. i did not want to be the black sheep. i did not want to be bad. i am a sculpture of wet clay that they could mold with their pure hands, and despite all that creativity in their alive and well minds, they have carved the word "rotten" in my flesh.

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7 a to h
I S A A C May 12
causes to cry for
underwhelmed and unsure
kept option open but what for?
my ego is bruised and buried
the fruits of my labour vary
some are prey to predators
some merely didn’t deliver
i should’ve invested in my vigor
not invested in my triggers
causes to try for
Nastia May 9
I take an icy,
Velvety peach
With bruises
From the refrigerator.
It smells
Sweet and refreshing,
Like someone hugging
In the rain.
I carefully bite off.
Bite by piece.
Sour coolness
Remains in the mouth.
Now it is a release for him.
After all, he lay alone
Among five white apples.
Steve Page May 1
Banners of blossom
Hardy perennials
One big metaphor
Words that featured when praying with friends this morning
Heidi Franke Apr 24
All this life sought
Was in my feet forward,
Backing into stumble on rocks
With no path, life is an S curve

It hurts to fall hard
Worse yet
Is to not know why
I walked at all

A cool spring morning
In the rain with my canine on lead
Rushes into the glade
Where a doe may rest unaware

Still at old age I know, nothing
Every morning in the dark
My eyes open, for what?
I have lost all meaning of why

Are the next rising suns
Teachers on the green that
Remain after the snow melts
A reason for standing up?

I lost track of my dog in the meadow
As I listen to a poet who says
That tomatoes do not bleed
Is my life a fruit I can eat

Through the spring branches
I see a home below, pale yellow
A white door and a pane of glass
Asking, will I come forward more

An unknown, will I care to find out
Where is the deer and my dog
The door seductively beckons,
Walk this way with strong shoulders

Every day is an opening
For planting new things
Or letting the past burn to ash
Stunned in body and bones my trips to the ground

The knees and hands ******
And worn, as the apple skin
Holds a hole from the worm
I am the fruit as much as the scar that shines, happening now
After you meet your marks, relationships, children, profession all done, no longer needed, just waiting as age wears my body down. What now? When? Once you get here you will know.
Shaun Copple Apr 16
Springtime frost confronts apricot blossom—
Destroyed, damaged, and disappointed—
Leaves the garden to rely on cherry and plum.
Disappointed again this year.
#apricotjam
evangeline Apr 5
I want the pulp of you
Your stringy white insides
I want the lattice of your creation  
To get stuck in my teeth
I want to savor every sliver of you  
The parts of you that need a warning
The versions left on the shelf
The bits of you that blend in with the fruit
But pack a punch
I want to relish in the chewy remnants of a skin you shed long ago
I want to peel back your orange shell
And taste the tender threads that hold you together
I want to drink your syrupy nectar
To gnaw away the sweet parts
Right down to the rind of you
And swallow the secret pomace of your heart
Gabrielle Mar 24
The woman, a nest of grey,
Takes you down to Chelsea Bay.

She stories you, and every time,
Mentions her garden, offers a lime.

A pile of words, so interspersed,
Grows so large, she loses sight of the first.

You scale the sentences, smile in hand,
Laughter, reveals, accusals grand.

She tells you, think differently, make circles of these lines
Use all the pieces of this fruity life, don’t dare discard the rind.

If minds had hands, as pontificate in tandem,
you’d hold hers steady, sliding addendum to addendum.

Then, saying goodbye, she extends once more a lime.
Forgetting, all too quickly, you’d already declined.
This is about my friendship with someone who suffers from dementia.
Dyneisha Mar 13
My Flower My Flower
My Bee My Bee
They’ll wave, They’ll dance, with petal blooming
Heartbeats as My Bee flutters
A daze to be watched
We are not the same
“I love you”
Two different worlds
“I love you”
The people will hate us
“I love you”
What about others
“I care not about what others think, only your words matter”
We can not be one
“…But I loved you”
I story of two can’t not be. The world see one as beauty while one is a curse. They feed for each other feelings the same. To merge as one yet threatened by what the others will say. Forbidden Love and it’s tragic fate.
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