you choose our cucumbers. You look for the even length, the unblemished skin, the stalk ends that should be wet with life, to know when we bite down that the flesh would burst with sweet water over our tongues. 

You’re just as careful with the bitter gourd, knowing when the unmottled green of its wrinkled skin will hold flavor, arresting and unmistakable in the vinegar-soured broth of the milkfish you bought whole, to be washed and gutted as soon as you got home.

You scoop a slice of milkfish belly into my bowl, the fat lining the middle thick and gleaming. You love this rich translucent ring as much as I do, but this is the part you give to spare me from the spines; too fine to see, they often catch in our throats.

Published in Issue 25 of the After Happy Hour Review; it‘s a print-only issue but I read the poem here.

The first draft of the poem came about after Karan’s “The Prose Poem as Sex Toy” lesson on The Forever Workshop.