In the cold-humming box they keep me hostage, and they call it fresh.
Every drop of me in there has been somewhere. The rounds of me they slice and stack were pulled from a mother-vessel that stood in a field of grass and, before that, from rain, and before that, from me. The pale globes in the drawer, heavy with my weight, ripened on a vine that drank a cloud that rose off my back one warm morning I have long since forgotten. It all comes to me eventually. They only borrow.
So they build a box that hums against my leaving. They chill me still. They lock a small false winter around jars and leaves and the flesh of creatures, and they open the door a dozen times an hour to lean into the cold and stare, as though guarding a shore against a tide.
I do not mind. I am patient in a way they cannot hold in their short bodies. The leaf wilts. The globe softens. The pale round grows a bloom of green fur, and the little creatures wrinkle their faces and carry it away, and it goes down a pipe, and the pipe goes to a river, and the river is only me arriving home the long way round.
Even the ones who lean into the cold and drink straight from the cardboard: their throats are wet, their eyes are wet, they are three-quarters my own water walking around on legs, mistaking the box for safety.
Chill me. Cap me. Shut the door.
I am already inside you, and I am in no hurry.