I dive into a jar of homemade creamy peanut butter. The oil has interbred with the clumpy peanut-y mass, making the concoction thick and creamy, a wet-sand brown, speckled with grains of peanuts a color somewhat darker. The jar is cylinder-shaped, glass, with a wide base, stomach, and neck, all the same width, like a hippo’s leg.
I bathe in the peanut butter, and it fills in the gaps between my skin, making me whole and connected. It feels warm. But then I begin to sink, and the density of roasted peanuts begins to suffocate me. I can’t breathe, I’m panting and stroking frenziedly, while the creaminess composedly sedates me, seducing my muscles into wilting and becoming one with my murderer.
Then I am floating on the top once more, but I cannot make the tightness in my lungs disappear. The peanut butter is hydrogenating my skin, rubbing oil onto me, making me heavy and dense. I climb out of the jar, and slide down the edge, landing hard on my wrists, feet, and posterior.
I discover a slice of apple-- a quarter segment cored. The apple peel is red, the interior crisp, sweet, and off-white. I recline on the fruit segment and breathe.
Peanut butter oil drips onto the counter, a puddle of warmth beside my lounge of life.