love bleeds between your palms

on sharing fruits as a metaphor for devotion.

i find god in the way we share fruits. my temples lie in between your palms where the pomegranate has bled. there’s a red love stain on the wood of the table, your hands and my heart— marks i never wish to get rid of. love, at least for me, flows through these fruits and in the act of sharing them.

maybe it’s the romantic in me to blame for this, but i can’t help but think about how when you hand me half an orange- you are giving me the days it spent buried as a seed. you are offering me the sunlight that nurtured it, the water that sustained it in the same way that this unspoken moment of tenderness between us- which i might as well call devotion- nourishes my soul.

i pay close attention to how you peel the orange— always stripping away the white parts from it. it feels as though you’re baring me along with the fruit, stripping down my layers along with its. and how gladly i let you. the sun splits open when you split the orange in half, basking the room in its warmth and light. a smile lingers on your lips when you place it in my hand, and i swear, i can almost feel what holding love feels like.

it comes effortlessly to you, and you hate that i make a big deal of it. but for someone like me, who has only ever believed that if heaven exists on earth, it is found in the warm embrace of your affection— it is a pretty big deal. i would let you carve your name into my ribs with a smile on my face for love you have blessed me with in this moment alone. this is how grateful i am.

in spanish, it is common to use the phrase ‘me media naranja’ to refer to a lover or a friend, which translates to “my half orange”. i have tasted love on my tongue every time we share a fruit. it’s the closest i have come to salvation.

love moves between us in many forms— in soft whispers before we finally give in to sleep, in slow morning kisses that say ‘thank you for waking up next to me’ and in the way your fingers trace over the hollow of my neck after we make love. but if i could choose, i would make a religion out of the way we share fruits.

thank you for reading.