Bell Pepper

Something has drilled a tiny hole right above the base of the bell pepper.

I try to picture what it must’ve been like to inhabit that green cathedral space as it expanded & its single cloud grew ponderous with seeds.

Imagine the light & the sliding shadows of leaves shaped like enormous beetles.

Imagine an orange sunset, in the absence of a horizon, starting from random spots that slowly spread across the vegetable sky, deepening week by week into fire-engine red.

There is no heart like this, so roomy, so full of sugar. If it is a bell, it’s much too good at absorbing every kind of blow — or else its tone is too high-pitched to be heard by anything larger than the head of pin.