all in all all all

The skin of a peach is so soft, too soft softer than mine, softer than the hair that grows behind a cat’s ear— Humanise the flesh of a fruit recognise it as something equally as living as moving as my legs—your arms. Its blood runs in every direction when skin is broken and it reminds me of an ant hill flooded with water, ants running in every direction in search of safety which was just removed as they drip from my chin—dropping from the face of the earth. The liminal difference between raw steak and the fruit of a tree is all too clear in my mind, suddenly I can feel the hardness of its rib cage and feel the beat of its heart. Flesh, meat, and bone all into one. Yet it’s so sweet, it’s so very sweet, and now the thought of meat turns sour in my mouth. How can two sit so far apart on the tree of evolution yet so closely on my tongue? Now it’s all too much, now the saliva pools and my gums feel rough. The pit of the peach is covered in pungent red left from the flesh ripped by my teeth and it’s as though I am staring at the core of the earth, and it challenges all my beliefs and understandings of what life is and what lives under the skin. Everything left unseen and unrecognised feels completely exposed and I need so badly to understand what exists beyond the seeming end, the seeming bones of my living peach *crack* in the core and within its core a seed of poison stares me down. (sweet appearances) conceal (bitter reality) (uncomfortable exposures).

all into one