Fruit
What were we all doing at the table?
I hardly remember the blur of your faces
or the ways you believed in your goodness;
when I hold you to the light to see what you’re made of,
you develop and are exposed.
So tell me, was I supposed to be an apricot or a plum
in heat under a Impressionist summer?
I only took away from your laughter
that it was something you could name “Amita”
and throw your teeth into with such speed
that I knew your lust was a cruel joke
spoken on hungry mouths many times before.
Your memory burns slick wet and scented.
An ex used to call me “juicy”
because of the way my weight —
tucked in all the right and wrong places
and emblazoned across my ass in sequins
since middle school (too early and too late) —
tests the patience of countless jeans
and felt ready hot-pressed on his body.
He thought I would fall as he was taught
in peels against the blade of his wants
dripping like nectar: sweet, silent, and giving
around his fingers and whims and faults.
I got rid of him and four pant sizes.
The pain of disciplined loss carves in new muscles.
In the seventh grade,
we read sections of “The Joy Luck Club”
writing bicultural purgatory onto the pages
where little Asian girls could be
confused and American and real
just as we were.
We felt their neutered smallness in the world
and hope for change.
In the R-rated movie,
the handsome rapist tongues a melon’s fleshy point
tracing the old jokes onto apples
of blushing Asian beauty
grown and ripe and sticky
just as we were to be.
He fucked her.
We felt gendered smallness in the world
and knew what was coming.
The men and magazines
say we are supposed to be hairless
and pliant and contained,
but peaches have fuzz
and are wanted bursting
with stones for hearts
that are notched
and unbreakable.
