i am standing in front of a mirror examining my body under interrogation room lighting. i did not plan for this, my body says, i have no alibi. i raise the light closer. i ask my body what fruit a man would compare me to. men don’t like apple women, supposedly, but i am not an apple. nor am i a pear. in the light i see a layer of wax from the produce department carving out my body into lines that do not form shapes. i shine my skin with a cloth and buff out the lines, making sense of my shape that enters many planes. perhaps a man would call me a persimmon, or a pomegranate. the most important part of the pomegranate is the bitter seeded middle.
Published in Seen And Heard, volume 1 in August 2019.