I want to punt the unripe

nectarine down a dawn-beige hallway of snores and shrieks.

I don’t believe that

taupe is a colour. Everyone is trying to convince me of something.

At what point is it all too ludicrous?

Taupe. That’s when.

I suspend the belief like a sky-eating pie,

grisly, gutsy, topless. Sexily soggy-bottomed. One for the necrophiles and the pimple-poppers.

A turtle without a shell isn’t

cute and naked. It’s dead. A spatchcocked ribcage. An ex-exoskeleton

thwapped open like fresh coconut. Do you know how many people die by coconuts every year?

I swear to taupe. Always pack extra bones. Conceal a peach pit in your rusted jaw.

A shell is a body. A pie is destined to splat. A coconut is shy.

I can astral project myself into anything but a false colour. I eat taupe

every day. I do the same thing forever. It’s taupe. Doesn’t exist.

I don’t know where this came from. The nectarine ripens, protects its teratoma. Taupe edges

back to the imaginary. I scare it all away.