Seed

Elizabeth Bolton

Along with most of the world’s

trustworthy people I behave as if

an avocado seed cannot be cracked.

Not only is it too slick with green, oily

meat to grip but the thing looks

to be made of solid, polished wood.

I used to live alone and dust my studio

multiple times a day.

I used to line my books and papers up so their edges

would either intersect at a perpendicular

or never, ever at all.

My desk used to be untouchable

(my hands would hover

just above it);

it still is, though pressed into a corner now.

Pressed into a corner and untouchable is how it earned the name

altar. My work sings now

as does the ignored kettle

the hole in the spout intentionally small

as it is for all mothers and I am well aware

that I built this prison, too, piece by piece, just like I dusted the last.

My husband chomps broccoli stalks

like a giant tearing up tree trunks.

“You can eat them,” he boasts,

“most people don’t know that.”

He locks the avocado seed between his molars

and the pause before the crack

terrifies me, not knowing

whether seed or teeth will give first.

The thing hatches crawling yellow innards

soft as stomped dead wood.

“Extra sharp teeth in the back,” he explains, “grip it in place,”

and I think I love him not because I am good

but because I am not, and because Gary Snyder said:

the Dharma is like an Avocado!

and I understood him. It might be

my favorite poem. I wonder sometimes

if I should not tell anyone that. I wonder sometimes

if what I’m doing counts as anything

if these words are not too easy

to be called brilliant and if brilliance might also be

crushing things between your teeth and scaring everyone.