Sonnet at the Supermarket

His eyes wash over families of fruit, crushed cardboard, sticky hands. The trick is to be molecular: a watermelon sick with jaundice is no good, mushy inside. Carries disease internal to itself. Like how cells hold instructions for their own death or how birds always know the way home. His eyes washed with chemical droplets and still unseeing. Like light flushed down the sink. Shade of white so brutal it could kill you. Choose the roundest, brightest fruit, says Appa. Glaucoma, from glausso, from glow, the consequences of blurred closeness, of seeing beyond yourself. Any wound but this. Fruit with the darkest stripes. It is a kind of science. Like the weather forecast and like poetry. His eyes wash over his daughter’s face. The bravery of searching for sweetness where there is only dust.