floridian: for terra
| You offer me a slice of the orange you’ve been carefully sucking on. The creamsicle Sunday sun is going down, the day suddenly hazy behind us like a dream, and we remember it like looking at a furnished room through a layer of gauze. I am sprawled out with a book on the floor, you lie above me on the couch. Your long legs are so close to me I can smell the cigarette you had earlier; it lingers on the cuffs of your pants from where you pitched the smoldering butt down by your shoes. There is nothing between us but the silence and the turning of pages that sounds like the beatings of birds’ wings. You bend your arm towards me, holding an offering of something out near my cheek — I glimpse the vivid shock of orange, the juices that quiver inside delicate droplets, the erotic rind your fingers picked off like ticks and cast aside on the floor, the bright clean scent at my nose. You drop a perfect crescent between my teeth; your fingertips linger for a moment on my lips while I chew. I have fallen in love with a Floridian: errant oranges everywhere. |
Jude Dexter has published or will publish both fiction and poetry in journals such as Fiction Southeast, Olney, North Dakota Quarterly, and Cleaver. They can be reached on Twitter @batyehudit.