HUSBAND LIKES HER TO LEAVE FRUIT IN HER VAGINA ALL DAY SO HE CAN EAT IT LATER

By

a Cosmo step-by-step guide
.
Can we ever write woman
without writing fruit? Without
.
food, blood-red, or cut/gash/slit
in half? Without languaging
.
something open? I curl the girl
back into her peapod, armored
.
to the gills, slimed, slutty
& surlish. I wind her up
.
on my twine-roll and shelve her
to collect glitter from dusted
.
past lives. I am done today.
Tomorrow, clot on toilet paper.
.
Next week, the men still circle
like vultures until she turns
.
around, turns air into glass
or herself into bone gristle.
.
Oh, metaphor. You are almost
always good enough. This year,
.
next year, next century, I want
my body to be a nail file, gritty
.
with tooth. No—shedding
birch tree, each dropped scroll
.
penned with fiery new hymns.
Goddamn it. I am trying
.
to be ambitious, articulate
in my desires, my enthusiastic
.
yes. Really, I just I want my body
to lose all its names, to become
.
a stone in nobody’s hand, day
-warmed, unseen, lapped only
.
by ocean.

Zoë Fay-Stindt