Fruits by Kristan Saint-Preux

for gay love, which is too often policed by law, and especially for Alan Turing, whose love was punished

we are two women, and we lie in bed together, slack mouthed. i hear trumpets when i taste your very soft suede skin: prickly pear, soursop & Galician moonshine flood my tongue;

under the covers, you press silk colored rice grains into your palms, and little dimples form in the pinkness there; you tell me this is your beauty secret, and you press rice into my cheeks

you place your hand on the mounds under my shirt. your flesh is colored with Crème de banane, slushing white rain on a rough terracotta tile, and almond;

your thick hair is the color of a dark yell and peach kernels; soughing violets, African boxwood, and sour cherry colors your deep crushed satin eyes;

can i place Drosera rotundifolia in your hair? you have hair follicles of pineapple fiber weave and raw hemp silk;

can i leave 99 bananas & Saint-Barthélemy-d'Anjou Cointreau as a drink offering for you at your susurrous altar? you are a god, and you keep me like a held breath; you keep the dried peel of the bitter orange laraha behind your Crème hand woven cotton ears, and you hear me there;

i leave a trail of bhat at your smooth pale feet, and i hear the long plaintive whistle of a fleeting train and know my heart is pierced with your sharp Buffalo bone;

i watch you wash your long hair in hazelnut Frangelico and guavaberry every day; in the shower, you have custard apple breasts, delicate flemish glass nipples, a finger lime navel;

everyday this week i've had a lump in my throat when i look at you; if you wear that rabbit fur like that, if you wear yellow ranunculus, medium course leather, and White Saxaul, my heart, the Cramer's eighty-eight butterfly, will be your worshiper.

we have to go. you get up, beautiful in no clothes and rumpled hair. when we leave the house, the car is covered in a film of fresh rain. at the airport, we walk the longest blue mile. we get coffee and see the glowing terminals. we talk story.

damn, everyone in the airport is staring because i'm falling apart. i don't want to say goodbye to you, ever. some people here think i'm your sloppy best friend. so i kiss you deeply, right on the mouth. you're so beautiful that my fiberglass tears won't stop. i'm being cut up, and i'm silent as you take one last look back at me before you go through your departure gate.

it's a lonely walk to my gate. i wish we could go back to bed where we were ripe fruit all tangled up.