Strange Fruit.

the street opened and towards me rushed

                        a heaving winter breeze

in it was a smelly little breath / a reminder

that warmer things would come

and in it i remembered /

that you are some strange fruit

with glaring sunlight skin, soft in an irksome way

like a bruise.

                        when you’re near me i feel gross / unrefined

because i want to touch you / touch the kind of skin

that touches back

            puckers the pads of fingertips, leaves powdery follicles

under fingernails. i say gross

because i’m lazy

and i haven’t found the right word yet / but it feels like gluttony

like a smell

that mums want rinsed away.

                                                                      

                        i don’t know when i started feeling this way 

                        towards you

                        when your mouth became a tangerine / mushy

                        unprotected from me

                        // but it’s more than that

it’s the coming of spring and your house / its trees

it’s the drooping orange sun / the stretchy evening

the golden orb setting up its web, it’s the driveway dew

                        the possums / their babies

                        and all their human-like hands

it’s the champagne coupe

filled with orange juice

they call it ‘kitty’s glass’

            and it’s reserved for me

            for when i come around.

i was in the park
where we had never been together

it was unchartered territory / a place where you were not

and i inhaled an imagined childhood

/ this park, I could have grown up in

the trees, their arthritic wrists

creaking in breeze

their spindly little fingers / branching across cloud

became, steadily, the capillary veins

of your nostrils

                                    

it's the way you're in everything, i think