I squeeze the plump strawberry, holed like a miniature heart,
and let the juices slide down my thumb,
filling up the dry cracked skin;
organic moisturiser.
The pink liquid wells up in the little hollow at the base
of my thumb, like a pond under a willow.
I lap it up and go to take another,
studying the yellow seeds,
tiny purses, fertile with wealth.
These berries are strange; they wear their ovaries on the outside.
I am aware of how viable, how bursting with the smell of birth
they are. They taste of old sex,
and my saliva fizzes on their surface.
The seeds rest in little nodules, dips like the pores of skin,
hairy and slightly erotic.
And I suck on the pinkish inside marrow,
savouring the veins and hanging tendrils of flesh
that make up this little organ.
It is overt and crimson, bland genitalia,
a poster. I open my mouth, and my gullet,
and swallow it whole.