I came across this bit of prose poetry yesterday. Someone, can’t even recall if it was a friend or merely a random post that popped up on my news feed, posted it without attribution and I was a bit enthralled by it. I’m tempted to break it down so it looks more like a poem, but I’m just going to leave it the way I encountered it. I don’t even know if that part about their taste buds is true, but I like to think it is … and I love the subtle twist with which the author concludes. I just now highlighted what I thought was a sufficiently distinctive phrase and searched for it on Google, immediately discovering who the author is … so I will now add a citation below. I hope you enjoy this very short, highly evocative bit of writing.
Ever since I found out that earth worms have taste buds all over the delicate pink strings of their bodies, I pause dropping apple peels into the compost bin, imagine the dark, writhing ecstasy, the sweetness of apples permeating their pores. I offer beets and parsley, avocado, and melon, the tops of carrots.
I’d always thought theirs a menial life, eyeless and hidden, almost vulgar—though now, it seems, they bear a pleasure so sublime, so decadent, I want to contribute however I can, forgetting, a moment, my place on the menu.
from Bonfire Opera by Danusha Laméris, © 2020
Systems Savvy 
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