New poem: Melon

I bought a memory stick and put some files on it.

When I opened it up, I saw that it had hundreds of thousands

of files on it. I started opening up some of these and I saw that

it wasn’t just files that I had made on there. It was my memories.

I opened a file called ‘Melon’ and it said that I had eaten a melon

near the Colosseum in Rome and that I swallowed the pips. I

don’t think that can be right. I don’t think I would have swallowed

the pips. I know why I wouldn’t have swallowed the pips: it’s

because my mother always said that she got appendicitis as a

result of swallowing melon pips. I looked that up on the memory

stick to see if it had that bit of memory. It was there. I’m not

sure where this leaves me. Should I go with the memory I have

of not eating melon pips? Or should I trust that the memory

stick has got it right? I mean, I can remember the melon

outside the Colosseum in Rome. It was summer and too hot

for me. There was a guy selling melons. I remember eating the

melon. I don’t remember how I got into the melon. Did he open

it up and whip the pips out? Or did he just hand it to me and

I opened it up with that knife I always took around with me?

And I know how to do that thing where you whips the seeds out,

cut the melon into segments, run the knife between the skin and

the flesh, then cut the crescents of melon into sections, then

stick the point of the knife into one section at at time, so that

you can eat the melon, chunk by chunk. But no seeds. That’s

the point. No one wants to eat the seeds. My mother used to

collect them, wash them and make necklaces out of them.

That one’s on the memory stick. I guess it got muddled between

the necklace and some baloney about me eating the seeds,