Oarsman

The perfect plum sits in the palm of the hand like a flushed cloud
during sunrise, or a bowling ball of decadent purple hardwood.
Sliced into half-moons, the meat, fibrous and dense like pork,
starts a deep red, lightening into a blend of rose, orange, and bronze,
before finally pooling into a core of soft blonde. The skin pulls off easily
with teeth, thin as lily petals but firm, and its taste fills the mouth
with brine that recalls the sea, with the final promise of sweetness.

The perfect boy drags me into the intimacy of a dark place, and his hips move
over me like the revving of a engine running on blood. In a blazing corner
of my mind, a rifle goes off. The shot strikes Eve in the heart and returns
her, instantly, to dust. Later, he tells me I touched him as though begging.
Both too tender and too calloused, this body, both too ashamed and too
proud; how to describe the violet shadow that’s beaded over me, like sweat, seeds
of pearl, the reminder that summer’s heat will make maggots of chopped plums?