Citric Acid

When I first ate an orange I tore off a piece and

kept it in my pocket for years, and whenever I was

frightened I would run my fingers over it, each one,

feeling to the thumb, contemplate taking it out to

view as the detached scientist watches the jellyfish

in a jar, forever motionless, content in formaldehyde,

safely removed from the tentacles that can, will,

kill. But I never would, until in the dark fallow

times, evenings lying awake sketching the gaps

in my memory, I would wrest it from its hiding place

and study every divot, dimple, dip and ditch, pit

and pitch, the strings connecting it to the body long

since torn away. When I turned it just so in the

sickly yellow lamp light and noticed the rot, cotton-ball

white and moss green and softer than both, I put it

back in my pocket and laid in satisfaction that it

was there, that I had seen it and remained whole. It

kept all those years – to know that it could one day be

unsalvageable was enough, yet with smug satisfaction

I assured myself that it wouldn’t. Even still, sometimes

I held it between my first two fingers, like a cigarette,

waited for the pressure of this home-made vice-grip to

be so overwhelming that it finally burst.

Do you want me to be honest?

I never push it too hard. It always goes back into my pocket.

When the viscera is caught by the wind, what will I have to keep?