Papayas
Narrative Poetry
I used to pick Papayas from
The papaya tree that stood behind the park benches.
Luscious and buttery and sweet.
I revered in how my teeth would break the skin and make
individual grooves in its milky flesh
And eventually
Find its seeds
Slick and round and black
Like caviar.
When you dig out the slippery seeds
with your dirty fingernail
And roll them like marbles between juice smeared fingers.
I remember how it was bruised,
Hung in swollen orange lanterns
Late in harvest season.
How we searched for the ones that were the fullest
Sometimes tugging, already
At its own branches, begging to feel the warmth of the ground
And how we’d pluck them, ripe and swaying
Sometimes standing on our tippy toes
on the park bench to get the roundest ones.
Then our mother began to buy us papayas from the supermarket
All spotless and golden and cling wrapped
The ones that were bruised, inspected and
Thrown back into the basket
And we had to start brushing and braiding our hair
Because nothing goes unnoticed.
And we started comparing who was skinnier
and tanner and had the straighter nose
How your name would be tossed,
A whispered taboo bouncing off the wall of the locker room,
The cafeteria and the comment section because
You just aren’t enough.
Now there are the neon tabloid covers
That plaster to the bottom of the subway floor
Browned and torn by the thousands of feet
pushing against each other.
And airport security trays, clattering plastic against metal
Through thousands of hands 1
And cigarette butts passed and lit
again and again through
Thousands of lips,
But the papaya, overgrown and misshapen and sweet
Burgeoning unobserved
from behind the lush green
is untouched and wild
and my own.
So I cupped my papaya between my palms
Lumpy and bruised and flush with ambrosia
From the highest branch on the papaya tree
Behind the park benches
And let its juices smear across my chin
As my teeth pierce through a sliver of bruised skin.
