coconuts

When you fall in love
It’s like a ripe coconut –
You get all the good sweetness, the milk,
The juicy love that makes love so appealing.

But after awhile, the coconut
Goes past ripe and begins to harden.
All the love juice becomes thick,
Not so easy to swallow. You have to chew
On the hardened fruit to extract the juice.

There’s a lot more work to be done.
Once the coconut is beyond milk,
You have to grate the coconut to get
To the pulp of it all –
The relationship has matured.

You have to pour boiling water over it,
Making the coconut milk you once had so easily,
But that’s a lot of patience and muscle,
And you have to own a machete.

When you fall in love,
You must really love someone,
If you’re willing to ripen with them.
-Taken from the 2006 We’Moon Calendar