CHOCOLATE COVERED CHERRIES

CHOCOLATE COVERED CHERRIES

                  JOE TURNER

 Yes I’ve had chocolate covered cherries, when they’re fresh, languidly ripe with the sweet liqueur of sugar and cherries. I feel  my teeth break through the firm chocolate, the muffled sound they make just before the sweet 'liqueur creeps over my tongue, flooding my brain with the lush taste of chocolate and cherries. I anticipate the erotic sound of the crunch of the maraschino cherries,  I slowly chew and mix them with the warmed chocolate. I hold one in my hand, admiring the completeness of it in its fragile chocolate shell. A mouthful of eroticism, I roll it in my fingers till I can feel it begin to melt, I wait until my tongue can anticipate how it will feel, and then I decide how I will eat it. Perhaps I will slowly press it to the roof of my mouth and breach the chocolate covering ever so gently until a small rivulet of its sweet essence spreads out across my tongue, or, maybe I will crush it in one mighty clench of my jaws and grind it into an explosion of taste that I capture in one tongue writhing moment. Yes I must say, I have had those chocolates before- many times.