naive grotto
Boiled tomatoes collapse
like apologies reheated too long—
their skin splitting under truth’s steam.
I stare at them,
a red too tender to trust,
and tell myself I just don’t like the texture.
Spinach—dark, limp,
a forest wilted into obedience.
It smells like health,
like someone else’s idea of goodness.
Maybe that’s why I push it aside—
not for the taste,
but the sermon it carries in its green veins.
Beetroot bleeds,
and I look away.
Its stain lingers longer than hunger,
a sweetness too close to sorrow.
I think of all the times
I mistook depth for decay,
color for warning.
And the pomegranate—
a thousand hearts,
all armored in one rind.
I never know where to bite.
It asks for patience,
for small acts of surrender—
a slow undoing I’ve never learned to love.
Maybe I’m not afraid of flavor,
but of being changed by it.
Maybe I chew my life halfhearted
because I fear what will soften
if I ever let it in.
So I tell myself:
I don’t like the food.
But maybe it’s not the food.
Maybe it’s the mirror—
how every meal
shows me the part of myself
I keep refusing to taste.
pastel holly
low flume
shadow lintel
steep oyster