Early Cascade

I couldn't have waited. By the time you return it would have rotted on the vine. So I cut the first tomato into eighths, salted the pieces in the dusk and found the flesh not mealy (like last year's) or bitter, even when I swallowed the green crown of the stem that made my throat feel dusty and warm. Pah. I could have gagged on the sweetness. The miser accused by her red sums. Better had I eaten the dirt itself on this the first night in my life when I have not been too busy for my loneliness— at last, it comes.