By Jill Jupen
Did you know
in the kitchen that morning,
sun streaming through
the screen door
when you said,
“I will show you
the best way
to cut a pineapple.”?
Did you know and so
take a few moments more
than were necessary
to slice off the flower
of its top, to make
the long vertical cuts
in the prehistoric skin,
to split it open,
juices flowing amber
on the smooth, worn surface
of the kitchen table?
Did you know as you
gathered and held tenderly
the cubes in your
work-roughened hands,
offering them to me,
an initiate, who took one section
as if it were gold,
that you were giving much more
than knowledge of pineapples,
that sweetness would
throb faintly on my tongue
like an unfinished
sound?
Jill Jupen lives in Vineyard Haven with her husband, four dogs, and lots of books.
