Someone hollowed out a melon, placed the boy inside.
It’s on Youtube. Just his head and shoulders,
like a bust, but then it’s smooth green, all the way down.
They could have gone for a turtle effect, with holes cut
for his limbs. I found such constructions, searching later
to determine if kid in a melon thing was widespread.
The boy gnaws his way across the Internet, sitting still.
This is less a costume, rather more a circumstance.
So young, his tender skull lolls heavy on its stalk,
its scaffolding the round wall of watermelon.
He’ll never reach the rind but stays relaxed,
well inside the innocent gluttony of infancy.
He laps red. The sweet paps of his mother cannot
be catalogued that far away in his brain stacks.
Nothing to fret over, we’re invited to laughter,
though I can’t. Well, first I check myself,
then I relent, rerunning the clip of his supper
as often as I like, somewhat akin to the way
he applies himself to his delicious confines,
as larva left to hatch inside the endless meal
will dine at will, not lifting a finger.
He’s sent out to us to be cute, this toothless
all you can eat boy, and the comments box
swells with thanks. Clearly, days are made.
I’ll be mindless as this blithe babe
residing inside watermelon sugar,
for a while.
There’s just one thought I keep away.
Is this the way we eat our days?
|