April 5, 2022

the postman delivers grapefruit

from Liz’s friend in Arizona. They’re the size of softballs from 8th grade gym class
that year I kept missing on my swing, a little too early or late I could never tell. 
I’d focus and aim and aim and focus and then I'd hear a thwump in the catcher’s mitt.
Three times I’d swipe at the air in front and three times, the dull sound of my failure 
just behind. Here, a corner of the kitchen has taken on a festive tint, the nearby 
oven mitts and dry goods canisters transformed into a solar system at the center of which 
a trio of suns cast an unambiguous glow. These last weeks—no, perhaps my whole life—
I’ve been swatting at assaults I can’t control, my armory anemic against a velocity 
that favors the odds against me. What are we to do in our smallness? I hold a grapefruit
in my hands and peel the skin loose, and tiny droplets of summer scatter all over the floor.