It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!
1. You need a sharp-pointed spoon. You hunt through the bins at Goodwill, settling spoons into each others’ hollows, counting out sets of rose-trellised forks you don’t need, training your eye to seek out something serrated. 2. You hollow the pulp out of each section. You leave the membranes intact. 3. You didn’t set out to eat a grapefruit; they just started arriving on your doorstep weekly. Your partner makes a face when you offer the coral-colored juice: it needs sugar. You delight perversely in that wince, a reminder of how much sour you can stand. 4. There will be splatter. You’d better move your daughter’s homework off the table. The 400-page biography will go back to the library with its pages speckled, crisp white paper damp and relaxed. 5. Eating a grapefruit absorbs attention. You can try to do the crossword or write a poem about eating a grapefruit while eating a grapefruit but soon you find you haven’t filled in a letter in five minutes, you’re luxuriating in bitter liquor, this one thing. 6. Yesterday you set some nectarines on the conveyer belt— the cashier passed them over her scanner, paused to inhale with half-closed eyes— but they seem to be gone so quickly. Only the grapefruit—its untidy treatment, its yielding flesh, its bright and biting flavor— only the grapefruit lingers.
Meg Yardley lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her poetry and short fiction have recently appeared in publications including Salamander, Cagibi, SWWIM Every Day, Mom Egg Review, and the Women’s Review of Books.
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