Cantaloupe

She is cutting a cantaloupe in her underwear 
with a long knife--
the one that always makes me nervous,
as she drops it doing the dishes,
or motions something in her Italian way 
with the knife still in hand.

Or just now, licking the cantaloupe juice from it,
the nectar dripping down her chin like blood.
Or like shampoo in the shower.
Or sex on a hot day,
palms slicked with sweat,
hands on breasts,
and legs salted like pretzels.

She is peeling off her t-shirt
in front of the kitchen window.
Just skin loving the morning air,
breathing in the sunlight through open pores
and through open doors 
when she checks the mail in her bathrobe.

She is reading the newspaper now,
coffee that is too hot in one hand
and our new president’s face in the other.
She spills her coffee on him.
It was an accident.
I would have spilled my coffee on him too,
but not accidentally.

She is wrong for me
the way snow is wrong in the summer,
but it has happened before.
I have seen it.
And wrong as it may be,
the children still danced in it.

Sometimes I kiss her so intentionally,
like God dropping to his knees
careful as he drops the morning sunlight.

And sometimes I kiss her
and I wonder why
                        I
                              can
                                      feel
                                               the
                                                       knife
                                                                 every time I breathe.

© Hannah Shapiro