by Mars Core
Overripe and sagging, I hold
with my last bits of sinew
to the branch. I long for your fingers
to bruise my soft flesh.
I have waited all season,
tempering and stewing
in my fuzzy pot of skin,
for you to pluck me down.
The juice is choking,
wanting to pool in the dry ponds
of your mouth. My fuzzy skin
begins to sag and dimple.
You come to the tree the day after my tendons snap.
Flies sway everywhere like Easter-going devotees,
roots consuming my spilled pulp back into the tree.
Pick up the seed of my body’s fruit,
love, and bury it in your back garden.
Mars Core is an English major at OSU studying Creative Writing. They plan to remain at OSU and pursue an MFA in Poetry. Their first love is illustration, and their work explores self-reconciliation and otherness, often through connection to the sea, marine wildlife, and speculative fictions. They live in Jenks, Oklahoma, and spend their time not writing adding new sharks to their collection of trinkets.