My love
is in no way
a cherry or a peach,
an endomorphic fruit
with a hard stone
at the center.
The oily avocado
is also a drupe, but
only the tough skin
resembles him.
Nor a pome.
The discrete ovarian
core of the pear,
the overblown flesh
which surrounds it
has nothing in common
with his body.
My love is a pomegranate
with a hard rind.
Peeled back, it reveals partitions
made not with the rigor of a honeycomb
nor containing such sweetness
but an asymmetrical matrix for seeds
themselves surrounded by a clear tart juice
always sustaining, even succulent
now he has come to ripeness,
and one can consume every delicious particle
until nothing remains but the chamber walls
which are soft as an unborn kid’s skin.
He will never be rotten with perfection.
Age will dry him
in a hollow orange gourd /
the hum and rattle
of the seeds within
like the buzzing of insects
hard at work beneath the summer sun.