Since finishing your fruit-themed chapbook
you claim to have squeezed every sour
word yet zing. You say all you wanted
was to keep in contact. Tonight we try
to unpeel these last lost months
with talking but instead halve
ourselves dry at the table. I thought
our juice would stay fresh, purify
water all that time. At least, you said,
that would have made this easier to digest.

(originally published in Ink&Nebula, Spring 2018)