So this is old and I came back to it as a method of procrastination. Read Apricot Jam (pt. 1) first or it makes little sense. There's supposed to be a pt. 3 (plum preserves), pt. 4, and pt. 5 but I'm busy and have too many projects so who knows if that will happen ever.

II. 

Margot stood crushing strawberries in her fists

Her mother was canning like she expected

The end of days, and Margot was stuck inside

With the endless buckets of fruit. Her hands

Were covered in seeds and macerated pulp.

A trickle of juice trailed down her forearm

And she unceremoniously licked it off,

The acidity exploding on her tongue.

It tasted vaguely of Kira. Margot sighed,

And spit.

Her neck ached, but nothing else betrayed

What had happened the night before.

What she and Kira had done in the old foyer,

In front of the bay windows that opened out

Onto the dark woods behind their houses.

She had thought it would be different.

In all of her naïve girlhood dreaming,

She thought the moment would change her,

That it would leave some indelible mark

On her skin. But her skin was still her skin,

And Kira had not called

The strawberries suffered. Her grip was punishing,

Crushing the ripe berries with impunity.

Her mouth was set in a hard line, but her eyes slowly

Filled with tears. They fell anticlimactically,

As if they, too, realized the limits of a moment.

Margot wiped her eyes and continued with the fruit,

Trying to turn herself into the acceptable kind of fatalist.

Because, she told herself, she knew how things would be now.

What was to her the culmination of ten years' desire

Would be to Kira only a moment, a pretty thing to

Crystalize and place on a high shelf to gather dust.

She might take it down and marvel at it in time,

While her husband and children looked on and laughed

At how wild she had been in her coltish days.

That was the most Margot could hope for.

Margot wondered what love meant when it came to

Nothing. She felt dried up and dusty, and very old,

And suddenly she too expected the end of days.

Kira had not called. Kira might never call again.

Kira might have spent the night scouring Margot's

Touch from her skin, disgusted at the saliva drying

On her dappled thighs. She might have spent the night

Being slain by another hunter, another hungry boy.

At that thought Margot took a mason jar from the counter

And smashed it against the side of the sink.

It cut her thumb, but no worse than paper might have.

Her mother rushed into the room, wild-eyed, and

Margot, thumb in mouth, explained she had dropped

The jar while canning. "Be more careful," her mother said.

But the time for being careful had past.

It had past the moment she had pulled down Kira's

Sweaty running shorts and her white cotton boybriefs.

She could not unwind and she could not untaste.

Moreover, she would not.

It was the end of times, after all,

And she must can memories

As well as fruit.

Because who can live on food alone?