Brown fruit by Autumn Hill

There are not many brown fruits

So, I will become one.

Though I will not be hung from a tree

Or be tilled from the ground,

I will pray every night

and fold myself up to convince

Mother God to mold me round

and drop me from her hands,

into mine again.

I will become a brown fruit to molt

To peel my skin away

And distance myself from the burden

With each flake of fruit flesh.

With my ball of a body in my palm

I hold all my skin between twiddling fingers

And drop it all.

Though when I begin to pass through the body of a deer

Who picked me up on the way to the spring,

A quick moment of sustenance with a beating pit nestled into the center.

I am chewed, eaten, regurgitated, and chewed and eaten again.

And the hunter dressed in his surroundings

sneakily still and focused

Shoots the buck

Takes it home with me unknowingly inside

Skins its brown coat and eats its venison

Throws out the stomachs.

I will find that my successors will still be brown.