To Feast On One’s Own Life
To cut a pomegranate, first make a square at the top knot where it clung to its mother vine, sun seeping into and through it, dusty calm breezes holding it. Once done, push your nails under exposed skin, rip back the flesh. A map forms, lines of inner skin molded into each other with their hundred burdens, potent with a future birth and all they could need to nourish it. See where the lines of skin spiral out from the center, disappear beneath the rind. Slice down into them, sink past that thick outer skin. It will bleed. Some stories never become, they spill out of grasp. Slide all the way down to the bottom. Do this again. And again. The mat below is the scene of murder. Someone walking in brave enough to approach a woman with a knife will ask, "What happened here?" You have six pieces of rind still holding themselves firm. Push a finger into the very core at the top. Break it open, expose it to the gaze of yourself. Hundreds of jewels gleam back at you perfectly nestled in baffling geometries. They are called "arils". The name of them sounds like air, but captured by a lick of the tongue at the end as if to taste it. To rip them away is a shame. To not devour them is a crime. Let them pile into a bowl. Sink your hand in, gather and let them tumble, feel the intense ripeness of them. Eat them by the handful. Their seeds will lodge themselves in your teeth, muting their gnashing. Crisp, passionate. Drink them. Like the thrill of red silk running over your skin, let a coolness linger on the tongue.
If you cut a pomegranate just right, you will never lose a single aril. But we are made of blood. So we bleed.
