Melissa Nunez

Fruit Fly Desire

Her hair slicks down her back—oil on rippling water. The black nacre of grackle feathers—tail fanned between shoulder blades. Her skin a butterscotch candy held between teeth and cheek, pressed by tongue to palate, sucked to translucence. But then she turns, and I am startled by the eyebrows not thick enough, the nose—not narrow, yet strong—the lips unkissed by me. Like scanning the beautiful body of a bird, sleek and showy feathers, and then reaching the extremities. The feet, scaled and taloned, reminding you of primeval predators from which they evolved, used to snatch smaller birds from nests. The fierce, slender beaks that pluck feathers from breasts to extract the meat.
I have not seen her in years, a decade, but the mere suggestion arrests me every time. No forewarning of relinquishing resolve or fermenting scent. A fruit fly desire: deposited in the sensory receptors that lie along my skin. When I encounter something resembling her form, it springs forth —buzzing bodies once eradicated now reborn.