Artichoke
For all the bother, it's the peeling away we savored, the slow striptease toward a tender heart— how each petal dipped in the buttery sauce was raked across our lower teeth, its residue less redolent of desire than sweet restraint, a mere foretaste of passion, but the scaly plates piled up like potsherds in a kitchen midden, a history in what's now useless, discarded— so we strained after less and less as the barbs perhaps drew a little blood and we cut our way into the core to rid us of the fiber that would stifle every ut- terance between us. In our quest for that morsel, how we risked silence, risked even love.
From The Burning of Troy by Richard Foerster. Copyright © 2006 by Richard Foerster. Used by permission of BOA Editions, Ltd.