Poem: Ear Fruit

by Grace Schafer Perry. This poem appears in the Summer 2022 print edition of Boshemia Magazine.

Grace is a storyteller who uses language and movement to heal, to remember, and to celebrate. She is a rising senior at Occidental College where she is a Black Studies major with a double minor in Interdisciplinary Writing and Education. She writes to find freedom and joy within the chaos of it all. You can follow her at @gracethekitty.

ear fruit

there is a persimmon behind her ear that ripens when I speak

one day I’ll get to telling her about it

about how sometimes, 

my eyes can’t meet hers ‘cause I’m watching 

it grow

nothing moves her quite like my mouth

does

the shape of my language determining 

the direction of how the fruit swells

if I’m not careful I will say too much and

talk it down to an overripe pulp or

not enough and 

watch it shrivel back to seedling

nestled in the soft bit of skin between her neck and jaw, 

it’s sprouted just out of her range of vision

I see it all, though, growth and decay 

the imagined taste of each lingering on my tongue

between my teeth

still somewhat out of reach

sometimes we hear each other and I feel my heart swell like

that fruit on her ear

both are full with laughter and tough

fibrous honey and I wish sometimes that I could harvest our love

make it into a pie or 

a nice jam 

and spread it evenly over both of our eyelids