When the music's off and the room gets empty

Oranges.

Did you feel guilt when its zest nestled under your fingers?

Or did you just feel inconvenienced,

Mad at the result of your cruelty?

Did you feel guilt when you peeled off its skin,

The only family it knew?

Or did you just feel hunger?

The acidic juice,

Coating your tongue,

A fleeting sweetness swallowed with none to mourn.

Mixed with saliva, drowned by the next fruit to come,

Its twisted rinds left wilting on your plate,

Discarded, as though it were the mistake.

Not your cruelty, not your desire,

But the way it cried as you tore it apart.

Each fiber breaking, each drop bleeding out,

Silently accusing, though it had no mouth.

Did you notice the weight of its silent plea,

The way it clung to its form desperately?

Or did you only see the pulp, the juice, the flesh,

Another conquest to meet your thirst, refreshed?

Peeling apart the fruit,

into bites you can manage,

but what of its autonomy? what of its cries to stay together?

Dripping down your fingers

Sticking to the counter

another mess to clean im sure.

After all it was the orange's fault.

for smelling like citrus.

for clinging to its home.

for daring to be whole in a world of consumption and hunger.

Perhaps you never thought it alive—

A fruit can't feel, can't strive.

Yet it clung to its shape, its unity, its skin,

Even knowing it could never win.

So tell me:

Was it worth it, that fleeting delight?

Or will its memory linger, haunting the night?

-August xoxo MWAH!

(i ate an orange while writing this.)