Orange Bites

I sink my teeth into the skin of an orange child 

blossoming from the furtive beginnings of youth, 

hissing as ocherous juice spurts into my eyes, a vengeance 

siphoned from the soft muscle I pulled apart. 

In that moment of blindness, I can see Spring looming 

over my seated form, spouting nonsense about the child 

caught between my fingers, stolen from her garden womb. 

I notice the sharp turn of her frown in my orange vision, 

the way her golem mouth opens and closes like unscored clay—

the way murderer drips from her mouth like a half-baked

insult. 

The grass pools around my skirt, splotches of orange juice

blooming over the fabric like plucked strawflowers. Spring, 

my disappointed mother, has left me once more to tend to her

more agreeable children in the far distance. She has no time for this 

cannibal raised by the clay of her form, formed by the clotting of her own blood. 

She can’t bear the mere thought.