"Blood Orange" (Revised)

As the spasms fade and salt
dries on the skin, you fold
back into yourself, a consumed
blood orange restored in a film
run in reverse: tongue-caressing
juices flow back into bruised
segments which rise and swing
together again into a sphere,
a world of flesh closed
and complete within itself;
then you shrug once more
into the malleable skin
and reattach yourself
to the swaying branch, among
but not of the others, absorbed
by the surge of your own ripening
until the sun presses so deeply
into your center the need
to spill sweet light opens
you once more.