Peel

Standing in my dark, galley kitchen, I eat a clementine so sweet it tastes like a popsicle. With my acrylics (almond, blue, iridescent tinge, petite) like tiny oyster shuckers, I can't help but pierce the flesh. When I was a boy with doughy nails, I never used to get into the guts. I'd field dress the poor tangor, pull the skin so precisely, so complete, you'd think I planned to do anything with it. 

I want to start this essay with a joke. That would better serve my purposes. But this is what came to me – a pensive, misshapen metaphor about transness, myself, and this Covid pupation none can escape. Clementines are born wanting their flesh to taste air.