ALL THE WAYS LOVE DISFIGURED ME

I sit
peeling oranges
for everyone
I’ve ever known.

My mind chases
itself.
looping
& collapsing.

My fingers work.
thumbs in the fruit—
tugging
tearing
separating pith
from flesh
from rind.
We come apart
in ribbons —
the fruit and I —
frayed spirals.
a soft undoing.

peel skins
pile at my feet.
the scent of ruin.
citrus & skin &
soft sugar-rot.

discarded.
sticky.
sugared.
sweet &
sick.

Surrounded now—
sticky-fingered, juice-wrinkled,
buried in 
citrus skin
like a hoarder
entombed.

White seeds lodge
in my throat, 
forming a 
great, 
hard mass.
calcified
in my stomach, 
a bezoar 
sitting heavy 
in my intestines.

Orange oil 
leaks
from the corners 
of my eyes
and seeps 
from my pores. 

My face 
splits open 
in a grin, 
and white strings — 
stringy white flesh — 
cling to my bared teeth.

I taste
what I’ve become.

I taste
every name
I swallowed
in the shape of you.

Donalyn White (they/them) is a teacher, community organizer, and tender of archives. Their research dances at the crossroads of radical love, liberation, and memory work. Through oral histories and grassroots archiving, they trace the echoes of those who loved defiantly, resisted beautifully, and dreamed beyond the margins. Their poetry grapples with the complexities of grief, loss, and memory while tending to the beauty of healing and the natural world.