Heirloom

Oooh, I am pleased with this :)

Semi-autobiographical, but also sort of messed-around with.

PREPARE YOURSELVES! Starting Saturday, I'll be composing 1 poem a day! I probably won't post them all, but I'll be doing a lot of writing.

"Heirloom"

I was born
beautiful as a potato.

Grandfather grew heirloom tomatoes
when he still had the energy to love
the arrival of earthworms in spring.
He sliced the juicy tomato insides open
and I ate them raw
with ground sea-salt.

Grandfather left one of his tomatoes in my hands,
one of his tomatoes like the saints he sought in church,
saints who stood over him when he became
naught but a candle
that Grandmother lit with the match bought
with a sacred quarter
rattling to the bottom of a little tin box,
rattling like the lid of a mason jar.

I hate the prickling fear-sound of my spinal chord
when I twist my neck too sharply—
the sound that makes me think I am a tomato vine
with a spot of darker green where someone's thumbnail has slipped
and I am now slowly dying.

I still love to watch the sea-salt catalyzed dehydration
of tomato-red flesh as it shrivels up,
just as I will watch my hands
become slowly lined and dry like corn husks.
One day I will be naught but a straw-haired scarecrow
and my sweet little grandbabies
will collect heirloom tomatoes around my feet.

Death, finally, is like lilies.
It is like the sickly butter of cannabis smoke
as it slithers down my esophagus to my stomach
and fills me like a mason jar.
I dread the taste of strawberry jam
as it slides too slowly
down my throat.