You peel me open like a clementine, every instance your hands drag over me, I’m left with nothing between us but sighs and flesh and whispers of thoughts of love and adoration that pierces my thick skin too deep. You tell me I must want you to bare me down to my core because I open so easily under your fingers that catch like fishhooks in pond scum on stomach, sides, thighs, trying to peel back the layers. I want my name to be Clementine so that I can be sweeter than I am, so that I can be opened like ripe fruit begging to be eaten, taken for all I have to give, split into sevenths, pith eaten.
Carrie Elizabeth Penrod is a recent MFA graduate from Mississippi University for Women. She currently resides in Indiana with her cats. Her work can be read at Anti-Heroin Chic, Sad Girls Club Lit, Prometheus Dreaming, Button Poetry’s Instagram, and corn stalks.
Rough Diamond Poetry 