Grapefruit Peelings
I seek, through the meat and juice, for seeds at the
core. I move my fingers below the yellow skin. It peels in ragged sections. It's thick.
I've never eaten a grapefruit with so much rind. I worry at the skin as if we were sharing
this for breakfast--you don't like rind.
The stem won't pull out. It stretches, umbilical--a
protruding navel that I work around. I split the fruit into halves, from the bottom, then
remove the stem.
I prefer cut grapefruit to peeled, though I eat
nonetheless. Tart, with a lingering bitterness from the rind, it tastes like melancholy,
like sadness tinged with other memory.
As a child, I believed that if I ate grapefruit seeds,
they'd grow in my stomach, spread roots through my veins, and blossom.
I finish the first half, quarter the remainder, and
separate the sections, one by one. I swallow the largest seed.