Poem: "Fruitless"

This poem came out of the December 6, 2011 Poetry Fishbowl.  It was inspired by a comment from aldersprig and sponsored by Anthony Barrette.

One day she was sitting
in an ice cream parlour
with her fiancé,
her future laid out before her
like a dessert buffet.

She lifted the cherry
from the top of her chocolate sundae,
all dripping with whipped cream,
and offered it to him.

He refused.

In that moment she knew
that her engagement would bear no fruit,
that their love was slowly shriveling
like the stem of a picked cherry,

and it left a bitterness in her mouth
as sharp as the aftertaste of saccharine.