I twist and pry the fruit open and it is perfect,

round like your cheeks and glistening like tide pools of silver in your eyes.

I squint at it between us like I squint at you.

Abrupt and all small.

If I look too hard I might be swallowed. 

You ask what half I want. Quick! Before the bugs get it. 

I pick the side with the pit. I wouldn't want the juice to dribble, a golden ribbon, as it is on me. 

The trees have stopped shuddering, 

and I bite into my nectarine that is the sun and my tooth chips on the pit that is way bigger than I thought.

The fruit is crying, juice like glittering bangles, 

of its tears around my forearm.

It is crying because autumn is almost over and even my scalp is burning and it is time to leave the things I don't think I can fully love.

I don’t wash my hands yet because I hate having sticky palms, 

and this syrup has even gathered in the crook of my elbow,

and I hate it, and it's driving me crazy.

And I haven't washed my hands yet because I don’t deserve it.

Because I don’t deserve the cloying sweet of this stupid fruit,

I must compensate by not washing my hands because

I really would like to wash my hands. 

Because I always must counteract what is good with something bad

Because I don’t deserve it 

And I don’t deserve you 

So I leave you in the suffocating, glorious, golden bubble of autumn, withered dry. 

And I leave you only a piece of my tooth, stuck in the pit of it all.

I leave a shard of tooth and that is all.