Bruised Oranges

At the end, orange for you was a color.

Orange for me was a fruit.

We shared a common language

but didn't understand the words.

At the beginning, words didn’t matter.

We were orange juice and vodka,

a heady mix of love and lust,

a hope for haven.

I hurt you before the end.

I squeezed oranges into the wound

neither of us saw, but sensed,

blood juice of the fruit.

After over 30 years,

I’m still sorry.

So sorry.

inspired by Tiana Clark’s “Proof:”

https://poets.org/poem/proof 

published on The Interstitial