I was twenty-eight when we met.

All these years in America ,

land of the exotic and still I had

not tasted the fruits of the land.

You found for us a room.

Private and quiet, our

first floor palace with its old, marble

fireplace and glass above the mantle.

Once a week we would meet – save

and scrounge from each paycheck

to make ends meet. It was necessary

to life, to go on breathing.

I would always go in first.

My cotton dress clinging in the heat,

I was all tits and ass - a sweet peach

embarrassed by want. How

I remember the light of that

white room. The antique ivory,

and darkening of the paint as the

sun slipped fast across the summer sky.

Always we brought fruit. A fresh

bag of cherries, pears, apples and more,

a bottle of sparkling cider which later,

we would devour. Lying as two gods

exhausted, our tawny skin burnished

with sweat.

It was the time I first tasted

a real Anjou pear, perfumed and delicate.

My first ever mango, how the flavor of it

exploded clean inside my mouth until

I ate through to the core, bone white

with a thin down of filament.