Skinned – Antonia Kearton

Skinned

The tomatoes are naked,
five of them, blanched, skinned,
a little indecent, something

not meant to be seen. The knife
is sting-sharp, dissects them
into precise quarters.

The recipe dictates de-seeded:
I push my thumb against the secret flesh,
feeling its moist resistance. It gives,

I scoop. Pulp, warm to the touch,
slick and tender, slips
between my fingers, seeds suspended

in umbilical sacks. I half expect
it to start pulsating, a stranded creature
straining back to its sea.

Detritus now, discarded, it’s swept
into the food waste, where it bleeds
among egg shells and onion skins, pale, lost.

Antonia Kearton writes, parents and is training as a person-centred counsellor in the Highlands of Scotland. She has been published in various journals including AcumenNorthwords Now and New Writing Scotland, and is intermittently on twitter as @AntoniaKearton.

One thought on “Skinned – Antonia Kearton

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s