L'HOMME GOURMAND
Oh my sheets, what a mess my sheets, rumpled and slung to the floor, red like candied apples and shining like my red heart but more red than apples these sheets, more the red of cherry-pie filling, more the red of the shirt I am wearing, the shirt of a moody cowgirl. Her black boots, her pale skin, her red shirt. But I keep forgetting you have never seen this red shirt and you have never seen a cowgirl or these red sheets and how they shine but I do think you know the color of apples. I do think you know how they shine like the moon. And I do think you have had more than your fair share of cherry pie and I think that when you were a boy you daydreamed about moody cowgirls and the dust and the sand of the desert, red hot, rocking your eyes to sleep. I think you imagined yourself a cowboy and not a good cowboy but a bad cowboy, a very bad cowboy, a thief, a rustler, stealing cherry pie from an unsuspecting cowgirl. I think you ate and ate your stolen cherry pie until your cheeks were red like two sour cherries. You ate until your belly was full and your heart was full and your tongue grew numb from the taste and people began to call you "l'homme gourmand" and you began to want something different, like a ham sandwich, or chocolate cake. But maybe you still asked for your chocolate cake with cherry icing and your ham sandwiches with a cherry on the side because once a boy gets a taste for cherry it is hard for him to turn his back on it for good. And oh the taste of cherries and the smell of cherries and the feel of the cherries on your tongue; large, round, extra-sweet cherries with purple-red flesh and a deep red skin; small heart-shaped cherries; fresh sour cherries found during the summer months at farmers' markets and roadside stands. It is all too much for a boy to take. Yes! The sheets, the sheets! Like apples, and cherries! So red! Shining like the moon, at night! And the moon, naughty moon, smiling down at a naughty boy and the naughty boy thinking: the sheets, oh the sheets, wet and shining, like the cherries
in my mouth.