The Last Melon

She walked on knowing if she didn't make a decision before sunset
her confidence her clarity her willingness to gamble everything
would exponentially curve away into the soft greedy darkness.

Her feet began talking to her in that scrunched up way things get
when bits of grit conspire with sock lint to press here or suddenly
over here ooh here this sensitive place near the veruka like random
annoying acupressure from a really angry pedicurist but she couldn't
stop walking she kept an eye on the long ditch to her right fringed
in cane grass and wet with days of rainfall there was something
that compelled her to pay attention to this cut in the land that ran
parallel with the road as she made forward progress.

Birds once settled for the night now burst out of their peace
and she felt irrationally bad for it shaking her head
a toad or frog leaped from the grass into the water
would she do that she wondered when faced with immediate
danger?

Ever since she shouted out in the cantina she'd been running
running  from the mob running from the corrupt authorities
she was a Banana Woman a revolutionary figure unarmed
and highly dangerous and she made the grave mistake
of fomenting her open rebellion in a nest of melon growers
bitter melon growers in fact because there was only one
remaining melon in the world and they refused to accept
this fate they stuck together and vowed vengeance they
would sooner starve than admit the Banana Woman
had finally won they would never change their ways
but they would find her and skin her alive and throw
her carcass into the ditch.