"Blood Orange"

After the spasms fade,
breath slows, and salt
dries on the skin, you pull
back into yourself like
a consumed blood orange
restored in a film run
in reverse: the sweet
essential fluids flow back
into the bruised segments,
which in turn fold together
again into a sphere, a ball,
a world of flesh closed
and complete within itself;
then you shrug on once more
the malleable skin and reattach
yourself to the swaying branch,
among but not of the others
as I am, each absorbed
by the swell of its own
ripening until the sun
presses deep into the center
and the need to spill sweet light
opens you once more.