GRAPEFRUIT
A grapefruit has been growing inside of me for years. It's only recently turned pink. My mother planted the seed, shriveled then, years and years ago. I don't know if she expected her teardrop to grow this fat, this soon, this quickly. It buds with the rising of the moon, the swish swish of the mermaids. And it smells like a grapefruit.
My period started when I was in sixth grade. I was shown the stash of green and orange squares in our bathroom closet, tucked away in plastic wrapping. It was then that I learned what wings were.
There were the Always wings,
the wings on my best friend's eyes,
microwaved barbecue wings from a mini fridge,
mini skirt and mini sandwiches and Minnie Mouse.
There were pilot's wings and angel wings.
Angel wings.
Her wings, I think, are pink. I'm sure they blush like
sophomore me on her first date, with her first boy,
her first love, her first tenderhearted memory.
He helped me fly. He tied a string to my heart, lifted me up, and let me balloon with him across the pages. I wrote a chapter with him.
My mother always loved that I read. She never asked what I was reading. Just when. She would whisper to friends about me and my books, piled neatly on bookshelves and bedside tables and kitchen counters and in the backseat of that silver car.
Silver cars, black cars, red cars.
He had a red car. It was topless, worth a pretty penny.
Pretty penny. Pretty penny. Pretty
was all that he could see. But I wasn't pretty.
To the boys at school, I wasn't.
In the mirror, I wasn't.
And even now, in glossy Walgreens photographs,
I wasn't.
But I was quiet and agreeable, accepting authority without so much as a question. I had them, questions. I could manipulate them, shape the words in my mind until they turned into clouds. I thought that if I called a storm, I couldn't feel the first dry finger on the skin. Almost to flesh.
He powdered his words with sugar. They tasted rancid to me, foreign and tingly, but not the good kind of tingly. The tingles that could send you to the emergency room, the one that swells your tongue and your tears, but not your heart.
No, never your heart.
Your heart has strings that can be pulled and tugged, a tugboat of the wingless. You must carry them, row them, and maybe they'll fly again. Fly high above your orchard.
I wonder if I'll grow a grapefruit tree one day.
THERE IS DROUGHT HERE
there is drought here.
like calloused hands, it is dry and showing cracks.
parched hands, parched mouth.
that must be why he is so thirsty.
but didn't he get the memo
that I am not a well?
he sprinkles compliments,
thinking that I will lap them up.
thinking it is some sort of magic dust
that will soften the blow.
his rancidity burns me,
but it seems to light him up
and take him far, far away
to a land with no social conventions,
no etiquette, free to comply to his
every whim.
there is drought here,
and I wish to escape.
JE LEEST
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