The Bitter Taste of the Rind
And why I like when its on my palm
Mandarin (The Fruit) I am thinking of her hands. They were wet after she had rinsed them in the kitchen sink, she was looking around for a towel, which I hadn’t gotten at the store, though I planned to buy one the week before she washed her hand in the kitchen because she had just eaten a mandarin and her fingers had begun to stick to my own palms. Beneath her nails were the remains of the orange exterior of the late season mandarin, when I kissed her hands I was reminded of a time when I was in the 4th grade. I used to leave the spritz of the fruit on my hands, this was to be able to enjoy its scent during my after lunch class. I had liked a girl in that class and during the lessons I would write notes that I would leave in her bag at the end of the day when the parents all lined up in their cars to pick up my fellow classmates. I would (after leaving the note in the front pocket of her purple bookbag) find my brother and walk up the hill to the house I lived in at the time. The girl told me once six years later that she still had the notes I had written to her, that the paper still smelled of the mandarins I used to eat in what was then called the panther gym. She said I used to tell her how I wanted to give her flowers, not the ones I usually picked for her from my backyard, but ones from a store similar to the ones my teachers were given on the last day of classes. I never gave her flowers from the store… after the long summer break I had forgotten what I had written in my last note to her, that I was to bring her flowers when we began classes again. She had moved to a school across town that summer and I wouldn’t see her again for four years. I had moved my lips so that each finger was receiving a kiss and with each action I could taste the mandarin. I remember looking up and saying to the girl with the hands I still remain thinking of in my room today, the scent still lives on your hands. Not a poem leave me a stone soft as your thumb hold my hand in the rhythmic room we look alive, two inches away Untitled Unfinished Edit I found her hands along my back cold. My skin was moving (waving), her finger prints remained near my bones. I bobbed my head (the damn things a buoy), all while her finger tips adjusted now resting on my lower back where the patch of hair was stuck to my shirt, the sweat. In her I saw myself. A piece of me lost stumbling waiting for her hands to catch my electric hips, my shaking legs. As she moved her fingers round I heard her nails tell me how much they know; how connected we are in our mysterious skin...