pluck

Scooped out like pumpkin seeds, this mass of words dropped onto my lap smells like forgetting.

A sludge of matter I never said out loud left inside some cavity, some hole somewhere, and has been dragged

out of me, the pulp of it wrapping around my back and up my neck, dripping onto my stomach.

These are the words I allowed to rot, and never touched, too ashamed to hold these moldy thoughts of mine.

so they turned, and I still won’t touch them; even with gloves.

A funny thing about my words...they sour inside me sometimes.

Bloating me, this softness is not my flesh, but gas. A nasty cloud of what used to smell

like gardenias and newly washed skin-

I won’t be opening my mouth now. Flowers used to grow in my cheeks I swear I swear.

You won’t see anything but dirt crumbs now...maybe a loose root.

I’ll find a pin soon.

And this is what you request to hold, this mush that I am. Gelled by poems and trees and my sisters and God, who wants the rotten insides of a forgotten gourd anyway? I could never be a gourd.

You think I am making myself another metaphor I am not I am asking: Who wants a forgotten gourd? I didn’t buy it forgotten, I made it that way.

Words and gourds are easy to collect...I forget that words aren’t collectible, because I do collect them. I collect them and suck on the sugar all day long.

Walking to class, chewing on “plush”, writing an ode to the flex of thigh meat under damp Black skin pliant with butters melted in dorm microwaves.

It’s a pity I let my thoughts ferment the way they do.

Even if they’re afraid. It’s fitting that the thoughts I birth cover their eyes as soon as they leave me. But what will come from protecting an old forgotten gourd?

I am asking.

(Written October 18, 2019)

"...chewing on 'plush', writing an ode to the flex of thigh meat under damp Black skin pliant with butters melted in dorm microwaves"