A History of Flesh (or, What Follows
Entry)
I remembered the pear
left half-slit, sticky on the counter.
Everything spoils eventually,
all contact leaves its mark.
Even air is not neutral.
What is rot but memory
made visible, a record of exposure,
sugar confessing time?
The evidence of your touch on me
oxidizes like fruit darkening
where it was opened.
Before I broke the pear’s skin,
it sat soft in my hand like a breast
and I pressed my thumb to bruise its
flesh.
It gave, as if it had been waiting
for someone to blame.
Your breath stayed even.
The pear browns in its silence.
Rowan Tate
Rowan Tate is a Romanian creative and curator of
beauty. Her writing appears in the Stinging Fly, the Shore, Josephine
Quarterly, and Meniscus Literary Journal, among others. She reads
nonfiction nature books, the backs of shampoo bottles, and sometimes
minds.