I should have been your main course and not your appetizer.
You told me I was hard to digest
That I perverted your palette.
I was too rich, too filling.
I overloaded your senses,
sent shudders down your spine.
Bruised your tongue,
stained your teeth.
Rolled around your mouth like a fallen tooth.
A blackberry, plump and sharp.
My juice, dark, burst in the back of your throat.
Sprayed my contents, a delicious diaspora
shot
Down the perfect highway of your digestive tract.
The good wine, preserved for centuries.
Sweeter than a maraschino cherry,
supple and triumphant on your tongue.
I seared your innards with my name in acid reflex.
Stuck to the walls of your stomach,
sedimentary, like a sin.
Left a pungent, lingering scent.
I was no salad.
But you continued, and ate, and I stayed chaste.
I could have been your main course and not your appetizer.
If I wasn’t such a liability, my meat so medicinal, my temperature, so seething.
Instead, I was a prelude to something more agreeable. I never become your bland, daily bread. Your curated comfort food, the kind you forked around. Plated and played with. Prepared for idle-tongues, vegetale, and vague, lulling you to sleep. I never was your lard to look at, your instagramable dish.
But I am sure as fuck that I ruined your appetite.