Proverbial Honey

I’m licking her from ear to neck, neck to toe. She’ll never wonder how she tastes. I’m so tired of that cliche anyway, as if love could be reduced to honey, to fruit, to food. When you’re hungry, even last week’s stale milk bread feels like Heaven.

Gray sweat off her shirt collar and the astringent sting of persimmon skin is nothing but a dryness in the mouth.

And making love is clinging on, making love is performance, last year’s Christmas gift stays untouched on her desk, I know. Stop putting her on a pedestal, I know.

At the restaurant the waitress coos to tell us what beautiful sisters we are.

What it would be like to grab this tablecloth, rip off these linens, to hold the stage as I hold her hand? It must be like leaves unwrapping in the gentle sun: sun-dried tomatoes, acid bite, acid bile, stretch marks, real bread, real calories.

I take a bite of the food and I say, “Mm, delicious. The food is delicious.”

The end of counting calories, being scared to hold her hand, being scared to fit in her clothes, terrified we have the same eyes, the same nose, scared I’m loving her because I’m only learning to love myself, because I look in the mirror

and see a body wrapped in excess of plastic, milk bread in neglected packaging, like she can’t bear to look into my eyes, really look at me, to tell me I’m the one.

No more Asian supermarkets, wandering through the aisle trying to feel at home, speaking a language we don’t know, seeing gray fish on white ice, whole persimmons. Making love to her, when you’re starving

is licking drops off a glass of water.