Take an orange from the basket.
Close your eyes.
Cradle the globe in your hands;
Let it be cool.
Let it be waxy, bumpy, smooth,
let the ground beneath you be firm and capable.
Let your nails, bitten though they are after yesterday,
curl through the peel and into the pith – it will live under your nails for weeks, you’re sure – all that earth, all that childhood.
Like sand in the summer fell from your scalp for seasons.
You can feel the juice rising like rivers sweet and fragrant over the rounds of your nail beds, a dull sting at your left index finger.
What color is behind your eyelids?
What is the pulse beneath your fingertips?
What is the color of god?
Where do you go when the world is split open?
Tell me of reverence.
The way it bursts when you finally pull apart the fruit, and runs down your forearms; it tickles when it drips
and is sticky in your elbow creases.
The way you never seem to mind any of this.