Pomegranate

A poem.

Pomegranate At first glance, a pomegranate looks like it should burst with monsoons of juice the moment your teeth graze it, or looks perhaps not like fruit at all but a leathery Chinese lantern in a restaurant run by immigrants soon to be deported. Yet you learn the pulpy rind that runs straight to the heart is honeycombed with ruby grains, and that the seeds themselves neither gush nor overflow, but offer a teardrop's worth of sweetness so subtle you scarcely notice at first. Cut in half, the pomegranate stains the blade and does not wash easy. Torn, it only darkens the hands. You have to peel away a bit of flesh, loosen a seed, taste, savor, repeat. To consume a pomegranate with rightful ceremony may take an hour of your life or, as Persephone learned, an eternity.