Cocoa by Rowena Knight

We’d agreed the shallow sweetness

of milk chocolate didn’t satisfy, that we needed

a bitter flavour barely tempered by sugar,

a chocolate that bit back.

Tonight you release the yellow moons of potatoes

from their skins. I listen to the shiver of lentils

sieved through fingers. Cool as beads.

I weigh flour, measure sugar.

Without thinking I touch a cocoa-powdered finger

to my skin. Later you will lick clean

the bowl of my neck,

and I will bite back, learn your flavour.

It will not be akin to milk or sugar.