She felt hollow when we slapped her so we knew
we had a good honeydew to take to the river
whose pulp would be no problem to remove.
At the flat rock bank where the frogs sunned
themselves and the birds rustled in the bushes
hunting grasshoppers, we thought, or stinkbugs,
Reid brought out the knife he’d taken from
his mother’s kitchen, and a lime. First with the lime
and then the melon he leaned over and made one cut,
the kind that seems impossible to perfect
but not a difficult move to get just right.
We bathed the honeydew in lime juice; its bright interior,
laid open like a wet cheek, lit the river
like a fire. You know it when you come to it.