SOULMATES

Once, my grandmother was convinced that soul mates only met in the afterlife, the kind of belief that sent her baking endless loaves of bread filled with rain and yeast in the days before her death as if each slice contained every thunderstorm she would encounter when she chanced upon her soul mate for the first time.

Today, I peel oranges in the morning light of the kitchen with my bare hands until the syrup stain the top of the counter, lick the knife used to carve out the wedges until all that’s left is salt.

There have been so many women between my sheets but every day I grow hungrier since none of them are actually “the one.”

They kiss me with tongue, bring bottle after bottle of red wine, but after all is said and done and they’ve walked the long stumbling walk back to their apartments under the gaze of a single street lamp,

I gorge on the bags of nectarines by myself. I wonder if when the time comes, my spine will fill itself with birds whose beating wings will carry me all the way through the afterlife and into the arms of the only person I’ll ever truly love.

In the meantime I settle on feeding my emptiness with the spines of men, bake loaves until my hands grow sore and almost forget how my grandmother died of indigestion.