you eat the tomato like an apple; I shiver
because we are nothing alike, you are a stranger, to me;
I crack an egg, crack a mirror, and look at myself,
feel the yolk dripping through my hands;
famously, I cannot bake, or I refuse;
I will not be told what to do
let’s have a baby, I smile
at the thought of his tomato cheeks and apple nose
and delicious black hair as thick as yours,
rippled and swimming down your face;
I imagine his tiny body squirming in my arms
and I want to take you inside of me
but you sit across the table, tomato spilling
from your lips, and I am sick with the thought
of your mouth on my breasts and your tongue in my ass;
I cannot hold down my breakfast
a boyfriend
a baby
the tomato sits plateless and seeping, bleeding out
so carelessly, you are remiss
and I would be too,
to forget how it felt to be your shadow
sponging up your mess while you sat there
pulsing with guilt, and an electricity that could not
keep the lights on,
but kept us up all night after night; we are so different;
nobody knows you but me, I’m sure;
how your rage turns inward and simmers over
until you are hitting yourself with your fists
gathering injuries and losing your mind;
the tomato cleaves around its scars, hanging from the pulp,
soft where it’s bruised, distasteful,
and you eat that, too
because I am everything to you, and nothing like you;
nobody knows me like you do, and you don’t;
but maybe a baby, I think,
cross-eyed and doe-eyed and dewy,
spitting and wailing and true,
bursting from my skin, streaming from yours;
could mend the rift; break the yolk;
bleed the fruit; rot on the vine;
and tell us what to do