The History of Cherries

I.

At the edge of the woods bluing in dusk,
I, six, sat with my new miniature tea set
in the brown wicker case.
Because I was eager to break it in
my mother had filled the teapot with Bing cherries,
semi-round like still-forming planets.
Lying belly first, elbows stamped with grass blades,
I ate each one, placed on a saucer the pits still fleshy,
their last ties broken.
How smooth the cherries were on my little tongue,
how ruining that smoothness with my bite
was pleasurable, how that pleasure was stunted
by the hard pits against my molars.

II.

The sunlight pressed against the cement back wall
of my middle school and my white cotton dress.
A cherry fell from my lips, down the length of my slip
and between my legs, leaving a trail of red juice
like that of an animal caught in the snow, torn open
and dragged back into the bushes.
The boys shouted how gross the stain was,
so I licked my fingers for them, sucked
both the juice and sweat,
the flavors mixing bitterly in my mouth.

III.

Perched atop a kitchen barstool,
I leaned over the granite silverslick with refrigerator light.
Home alone and didn’t care why,
old enough to make dinner but hadn’t.
Maraschino this time, pitless, syrup-soaked in a jar
glowing bright as an exit.
Wrists sticky, I ate until nauseated, the whole jar,
and cherries were ruined forever, even the scent.
Through the glass bottom of the jar
I saw a post-cherry world,
a place where no matter what you are eating
the stem of it has already been removed for you,
never again the satisfying pluck of it.
Never again the rough pit, the color of bone, emerging.

— 2011