My love for her is a fat yellow tomato.
The heirloom kind that has more ridges than
those wooden musical frogs—
what are they called? A güiro.
I had to look that up so maybe I should say
more ridges than a keyboard:
Up and down and all squares, Heirloom.
Like passing clay bowls from one wrinkled hand to the next, like
This summer has been good for tomatoes, like
It must have been the rain. Tomatoes love rain, like
this tomato has a purple stripe that runs
right down the side, blistering the yellow.
A fat yellow mirror held before
the strand of blonde hair she dyed pink
on FaceTime last night because
Why not? and
I had a bottle that was open anyway and
If it looks bad I can hide it,
Right?
All juice and thin skin
my love for her is thick headed.
And maybe a tomato is a bad metaphor.
Maybe I shouldn’t tell her that she feels heavy in my hands,
but there’s a weight to her. A rooted in the dark earth kinda weight.
A becoming for and becoming towards kinda weight. Like
sucking nitrogen out of the soil. Like
almost a sauce but missing
a bay leaf.
Or maybe oregano. And truthfully
she isn’t always Yellow Tomato.
Sometimes she’s Weeding The Garden In A Dress
and sometimes she’s Socks On The Floor but
when I visit
she scoops them into the basket. Because
I’m Socks In The Basket and
Let’s Sweep The Kitchen and
she doesn’t get it but plays music anyway,
(Usually Beyoncé or something with a Banjo)
as I sweep/ scoop /scrub/ pick,
what else can I say
Other than last Sunday she let me pop a pimple
on her temple.
And I’ve never had a love like that:
the kind that bursts
through the skin.