chocolate on the counter :: rotten

by Josie DeBord

She gazes longingly at the fruit

Just barely out of reach

Like a dog longs for chocolate on the kitchen counter

She longs for the taste, the color

She watches the watermelon as it rots

Passed from hand to hand, each one sinking bites into its innocent flesh

Until innocent can no longer be used to describe it.

It is impossible to have your fruit and eat it too.

How could she restore an eaten watermelon?

Reality beside her, she persisted.

A dog leaps up to the counter, seizing the chocolate in its salivating jaws.

The watermelon crumbled in her gentle grasp

Its pink flesh bleeding over her palms, Dripping down her arms.

The owner grasps the dog by the collar

But the dog still persists.

How could she know she was being poisoned?

When she had first seen the fruit, now melting in her hands, It was so ripe.

So sweet, kind, gentle.

How, then, could it poison her?

The watermelon’s flesh rotted right in front of her eyes

As oils from other hands

Deteriorated it.

But she was a blind woman in silent bingo

Selectively blocking out the screams of danger from the window outside.

“Fine then, let her be poisoned.”

Poisoned?

The dog began to curl, its owner now nowhere to be found.

A watermelon would never, right? He would never, right?

I’m writing this letter to let you know That I’ve moved on from the need of you. You seemed to scrape the sky when I first met you, Dark green and bristling with life, breath-shucking, Needles tough and long, gleaming dully in the summer sun. You had everything I hungered for, the resolute confidence

Of a pine tree among the birches and aspens, Strikingly out of place but burning cold with life, Burning cold no matter the time of year, arrowing the sky in half.

Now you barely seem to make it out of the crumbly dirt

Where your roots once sunk to the heart of the earth.

Wisps of your bark and dirty autumn leaves line the little dirt track, Beaten smooth by deer hooves and our eager feet, That leads to the hallowed place where the light couldn’t reach, Where we would sit among the fallen logs and trees, Dead branches curling like gracious, fluted fingers, Made to shield us and our trembling lies from the rest of the world.

You haven’t sat on your place on the fallen oak in quite some time, And I think it’s time I stop retracing my steps to that grove, To the place where I carved our names in a living tree, To the place where your rough hand closed over mine, Making promises both the forest and I knew you could never keep.

The moon hangs full and blurry over the patio

While laughter drifts from every corner of the yard.

Down by the fire, they’re chasing away lightning bugs

And throwing marshmallows into the firepit

To see the pale flesh spit and pop.

A couple people lay on the cool lawn

Watching the stars drift silently overhead.

I’m tempted to go join them there,

To glimpse the heavens pinwheeling so slowly

That my eyes do not catch the criss-cross patterns they make

Whirling across the sky’s darkened shell.

Instead, I stay at the folding table with you,

My mouth sullenly opened as your friends laugh

With gasping breaths like drowning fish, Desperately flopping against the knots in their nets.

My eyes drift back to the starwatchers, Back to the dewy summer grass.

I should be thankful for you and the things that you give, But I’m not, I never really was, And instead I long desperately to lie on the lawn

With my mouth closed and my eyes shining silver with stars, Shining silver with the things you never let me have.

T O T H E YO U T H T O T H E YO U T H T O T H E YO U T H T O T H E YO U T H

T O T H E YO U T H T O T H E YO U T H T O T H E YO U T H T O T H E YO U T H T O T H E YO U T H

O T H E YO U T H