Pomegranate

Pomegranate
by Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois

You taste of cigarettes. You always forget to brush your teeth. I have to remind you. It’s part of our illicit ritual.
My wife tastes of pesto, oregano, thick red wine. I partake of her body and blood. I spit out her seeds. She’s a pomegranate.
Afterward the sun pours in the window. I lie blurred on the coverlet like a pencil sketch, a landscape, partially erased. Crumbles of eraser surround us. You smell like rubber. Condoms are not literally made of rubber, but that’s how you smell, like retread tires on hot asphalt.
When I was young I bought retreads for less than ten bucks. Gas was thirty-two cents. My used Ford cost me $200. You make me feel nostalgic for a time that was simpler and less evil, though you have helped make it evil, you and I. We’re part of the Axis of Evil. Our sex is mass destruction. You’re hot and wet with sarin gas. You’re off-gassing like new carpet. Your skin is olive. You have a large Syrian nose. You nuzzle my balls with it.
If I got a flat tire, my wife always jumped in and fixed it, pumped the jack, cranked the nuts. She got a big kick out of it. That was in our young, innocent days. Sometimes it seems as if our lives could not become more complex, but they do, like the next episode of Breaking Bad and the one after that.
I sniff the burnt air, smeared with tar and nicotine. I sniff the thick crust of pizza, spread with pesto and chicken.