This is not a fruit.
It is the Buddha’s head:
dots, mounds, spikes – his curls,
as in the Gandharva statues.
When the skull cracks open,
smell stretches its legs,
flies panic, overdose on bushy sweetness.
That voluptuous yellow, sweetened light,
large-cheeked sweetness;
as if sweetness was a muscle.
Why is our blood salty but theirs sweet?
Juice, as viscous as fever,
never unreluctant to pause, to stick.
The seeds emerge out of the fibrous pulp
like Bodhisattvas, slippery but sincere –
not yet monk, not yet saint,
just anaesthetised by wonder,
unsure whether life was a second-hand thing.