Sundance

By Savni Apte

marmalade is fruit and sugar,

bitter peel has no place in it, just as I before you. a stray curl across my cheek, my fingers too crooked to brush it away, will you please? please let me kiss your fingers, before horror makes you pull away. I am made of bitter peel, of pit and seed and undesirable things, I am to be looked at in clandestine, disgust and laughter mingling in shocking array. you are patterned quilt, supple petals of a flower in bloom, berry juice, sweetest nectar. your colour would dull before me, perhaps do not touch me, let my curl be, the art of your mouth, the full, rosy blush,

the fall of your lashes, fanned against your skin too rare, much too rare.

I will perish, and wither and rot unto green, before I would let myself smear the picture, the paint of you, your voice trembles in gentlest harmony, brought a depth of grief to my eye, I am unworthy of even a mirage of your form, I will lay my life in service of you, it was always this way, stench and stink and blood of me kneels, before starlight and sundance that makes you.

By Savni Apte