Contributor: Sarah Valeika

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I’m beginning to believe the only union worth
preserving is that which binds
melons to their rinds.
Skin them, and you sculpt an organ so
pulpy, so infant fresh, zygotic

and when the flesh, as it will,
wraps itself in a soft, white film--
what then, dearest?
It has been shelled for naught and
its death sentence is written by a hand which
would declare that the melon was “scooped,”
not gutted

gutted, nibbled and rotted


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