Another Poem About Cut Fruit

My favorite color is the overripe orange of persimmons left too long in the fridge, though color alone isn’t enough to trouble myself with so demanding a task: to carve the leafy top from the bruising body, spiral a small knife across the skin. Yes, I am tired of poems about our parents never learning to say I love you, instead buying dozens of our favored fruit from the store. But after my father planted a persimmon tree in the backyard, he saved each fruit, the whole season’s sweet yield, in the coldest corner of the fridge for when I’d finally come home. By then, the persimmons had softened beyond repair, melting beneath his disappointed knife, and he sent me back to Mississippi with persimmons salvaged from the store. One I peeled for my lover before his early flight, kissed him hard on the mouth goodbye. The rest ripened, untouched during a week spent alone. I know I am supposed to love myself enough to peel persimmons, eat them in the tedious way I like. Not like this, my teeth against the bitter skin, the unraveling overripe flesh, my teeth kissing my own hand.