Peaches

It’s later, now.

After the peaches

and the pie crust and

after Dad said

he has lymph cancer.

It’s after spending 3 hours today blanching,

peeling, slicing and spicing

peaches I bought on Tuesday

and placed in the brown paper bag,

on the Mexican tile floor.

Beneath the side board

they rested into themselves

for four days.

Until their scent

dripped thickly from the air

and sweetened us with sunset vapors.

It’s after your wine glass shattered,

scattering broken glass like tiny seeds

all over the kitchen.

I couldn’t be sure

that no glass hadn’t gone into the bowl

with the peaches.

Because you couldn’t bear to feel how sad you felt,

you turned on anger instead.

“Why were the peaches there?”, you pushed.

“You didn’t leave me any room in the kitchen to work”, you tried.

And for once,

I stayed quiet.

I could feel how very sorry you were.

And I was angry too.

For another reason.

Sure the peaches. Sure my hard work. Sure.

More, that those peaches were for for my dad’s birthday.

My dad who has cancer now.

“It could be his last”, I’d heard myself say.

I had thought I’d accepted

that my dad and me –

we’d never accepted each other.

We’d accepted disappointment.

That we’d spent our relationship trying to change each other.

That he is dying just when I figured out I could stop trying and

I had. He was okay with me. And it no longer mattered,

finally, if I was okay with him.

I hadn’t realized that I was still trying to win him over, win his approval

with a peach pie-

until the peaches were lost.

Ah! but what peaches they were!

It’s so hard

to let go of

The peaches.

To let them go.

I had sliced myself into the bowl

with the peaches.

So ripe, sweet. And ready

to become something more than

I thought I was.

Ready to nourish.

Offering myself

in celebration and

in mourning

of  daughter and Dad.

It’s me now.

Lying over a pile of garbage

in the garbage can.

Wasted, thrown away.

I just can’t let them go that easily.

I am clinging

like the last peach

of the summer

on the highest branch.

Preferring to wrinkle and dry up in

the sun’s heat

rather than be picked

and eaten.

One Response to “Peaches”

1. Luana says:

   April 24, 2011 at 7:32 pm

   Once I had a little Daughter
   Her name was Peaches

   She had a little mirror identical twin sister
   Her name was Lucy

   They both died there in my arms

   I carried them around for 3 days

   till they made me bury them

   so

   I buried them in a cello case
   under a tree

   With their arms around one another

   in little pink dresses

   Thank You Mother
   for sharing this sadness

   with me