The tangerines in my bottom fridge drawer turned rotten.
I forgot about them, waiting there under the broken
shelf. The long lost fruit
of my pitiful labor. I wonder how they’d taste
now, how they feel
about love.
I pretend to know about love,
the sweet moments turned rotten
by you. Wishing I could feel
anything but broken;
instead my tongue can only taste
the forgotten fruit.
Sometimes I leave the fruit
on the counter, because maybe then I’ll remember to love
the sweet taste
it brings my lips. But somehow, the fruit on the counter always goes rotten
too, leaving my heart broken
once again. But if I am crushed by bad fruit, I can’t imagine how the fruit feels.
Don’t you ever imagine how it would feel
to be the fruit
left on the counter, or under the broken
shelf? To never experience love,
but instead, forced by your own nature to turn rotten.
Forever stuck with the fate of bad taste.
I would say you can’t possibly know that taste
of rotten tangerines. You barely know how to feel.
Empathy is a stranger to you, just a rotten
corpse buried somewhere deep, probably next to my forgotten fruit,
or in the grave beside your love
for me. Irrevocably broken.
Despite my heart being broken,
I still long for that bittersweet taste
of your love.
But, I would much rather feel
like my forgotten fruit
than become like you: rotten.
Because at least I can think of my rotten
tangerines, among the other forgotten fruit,
and remember that I know how to feel.