In Your Hands Helpless

Peel me like an onion love.
Shed my dry and withered outer skin --
A chrysalis in flakes that fall upon your kitchen floor,
In autumn leaves elusive,
When the drafty vents cough up synthetic breaths from time to time
In fits, in starts.

Knead me now!
I'm moist and vital, milky even, pungent.
But I'll leave you only stinging tears,
A buttery hiss perhaps?
But only if you're good.
You knew this going in of course.

Sweeter now upon your tongue,
And soon I'll be embedded in your flesh.
We'll never part --
At least until the final dissolution of this sodden, teeming earth.

I wanted this, you know,
When I was first and last seen by you
Resting, golden,
On your dingy, ashen hearth.