The Patience of Ripening

You were picked straight from the stem— a fruit fresh atop the bowl of offerings, something that must be fleece laid over blade. Not taken, but accepted. Not bitten, but cradled. And still, I would let you be the spiked fruit between my teeth— If you asked. If not to taste your sweet, then to feel your sting against my tongue. Pain can be a kind of proof, and love, a kind of wound you grow around. I apologize if I act too fast— it’s not hunger, not wholly. I am absent in the shape of affection— I mistake kindness for feast. Its a cruel thing I must train myself to hold, like fire in the cupped hands of someone born frostbitten. But you— you are the first warmth after too long buried in frost. The breath I never meant to hold. And now, I do not know how to exhale without spilling your name. I would trace every bract down your skin. I would cup your name like spring water, and drink until I forget every frost that came before you. Let me learn the patience of ripening— to watch without reaching, to want without wounding. If I must love you, let it be like dawn across a thawing field— no rush, nor taking. Only the reverence of light touching what it hopes to keep warm.