Lunch Break at the Meditation Retreat

By Angie Hexum

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Still looking within, we are quiet, separate,
as we make our way into the sunshine.

Woolly bees carom among the blue blossoms of ceanothus
and the breeze carries the scent of pine.

I take a seat on the long wooden bench,
lay out my snacks on the sun-warmed slats.

One by one, I eat the cashews, corn chips, cubes of cheddar,
chewing slowly as we were encouraged to do.

Then, the orange. Wedging my thumbnail
between fruit and rind, the dimpled skin releases

with a muffled crackle. I had not known until this moment
letting go has its own particular sound.

Chunks of peel piled beside me, my fingers sticky,
the jeweled flesh shines through rifts in the pale membrane—

the bare, sweet heart of it, a little battered, and if anything
more delectable for the deliberate work of freeing it.

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Angie Hexum grew up in Nebraska. After graduating from Swarthmore College, she moved to the San Francisco Bay Area where she pursued a career in speech-language pathology and raised two children. Of late, she has returned to writing, which was her original passion. Her poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, Burningword Literary Journal, Caesura, Gyroscope Review, and Quartet. In addition to poetry, she finds joy in time outdoors and in singing with a women’s chorus.

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