Scraps

By Wilson Taylor

Grapefruit is a winter fruit. I section it—pink sunset

yesterday over the antique mall in Comfort, TX:

high chairs, clocks, fur coats, letters from a printing

press. Everything once touched living hands;

some of it may even have value. Nearby a woman found

a Roman bust from the 1st century BC. When a museum

took it, she said, “He looked great in the house

while I had him.” She was lucky, then she wasn’t.

On my walk to work a man in a tailored suit bought

lottery tickets from the newsstand: “Two 12s and a #18.”

One recent study: We live longer the more we speak

to strangers. “They get along like a house afire,”

my 100-year-old grandma would say. She can’t form

sentences anymore—each fragment disconnects.

Her younger brother sent this grapefruit, a whole box,

each one delicious. I eat a section at a time, squeeze

the leftover juice into a bowl, spoon it into my mouth.

Wilson R. M. Taylor writes poetry and fiction in New York City. He is currently seeking representation for his first novel and at work on a collection of poems.

When he's not writing, he works in brand consulting. Wilson graduated from Amherst College in 2019, where he studied English and French and played baseball.

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