Fig Cartography

How to begin this? There's a dead wasp

in the depths of every fig you've ever eaten.

These days, I'm trying not to take everything

as metaphor, but still. It's the audacity I find

hard to bear. My friend considers every fig

an erotic revelation-sends me photographs

of splayed red flesh and through her eyes

I am there. Something already drenched

and begging for ravage. This is what desire does.

It makes an obscenity of the earth. And I think

I can never tell her, never risk the ruin. Who

am I to lodge a seed of venom and exoskeleton?

And then I think: she knows, of course

she already knows. It is so easy to love something

with a secret wasp heart. I don't know why

we love like this, except to say: you felt it too,

didn't you? First you shirk and then you lean

closer, longing for sweetness, but better than that,

longing for the crunch of legs between your teeth.