There comes a time when
you slice into a pear and think
oh, that’s perfect—because it is—
gentle resistance to the blade,
sweet slip of juice around the edge
and it’s delicious off your finger,
that drop, for the sunshine it held
even on cloudy days like this one
with the chill of a late-coming spring,
flowers already regretting
their emergence from their dirt pockets.
When you open that pear, halve it.
It’s a promise of comfort
yet to come. Whisper praise
and save the rest for later.

Issa M. Lewis is the author of Infinite Collisions (Finishing Line Press, 2017). She is the 2013 recipient of the Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize and a runner-up for the 2017 Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize. Her poems have previously appeared in The Banyan Review, Linden Avenue Literary Journal, Split Rock Review, Panoply, and Naugatuck River Review, amongst others.