Approaching customs, my father slowed the car.
"Time to eat! he said, and pulled us to the side.
He'd bought peaches from a fruit stand,
Forgotten they'd never cross the border.

Never one to waste, his plan unfolded.
We stood beside the car, peach juice
Trickling down our arms,
Falling at our elbows,
Gorging a delicacy turned to glut,
Making memories of forced generosity,
Gluttons of fruit, victims of parsimony.

My mother knew what was coming:
The cramps we kids would have
From smuggling peaches
In stretched bellies
Into Canada.

Passion
a taste of peaches
grown upon a wall
through glowing embers
love remembers
how sweet it was to fall

I imagine sitting on a porch somewhere humid and calm,
a tall tree, full of hand fruits, providing shade to foot traffic.
In this imagining, the lemonade is almost too sweet but doesn't stick to the table when it dries, and the mesh lining of the patio denies mosquitos all entry.
Their buzzing is drowned by the sound of ice being crushed three or four times with margarita mix and my favorite sin. Here, life has halted so dearly in a way I've always wanted, and in this, there is peace.
My parents would have kept a container of peanuts nearby to have with their Pepsis for days like this--
days where sound and warmth and humidity mingle, and fanning yourself with an old church pamphlet was better than being
bored, comfortable, and air-conditioned.

Peaches
     /Tuesday/
Kingdom- Plantae
Genus-Prunus
Symbolism-softness, tenderness, but grounding in reality- foreboding my fantasy.

Used in prose:  peaches, with her plumpness, with her skin pressed against mine, seperated only by my budding insecurity. When will you go, will I be fine?
    If you are a peach, dangling from a tree, and I am only, A flower or the leaves. When will you drop? When will you plummet and with it, I wither and decay.
   If only I were a willow tree, no ornament linked, or if you could be plucked early, before sour becomes sweet?

multiple weighty peach trees
outlined grief's path
lanceolate, broad, and pinnately veined
leaves cornered my view
of the clashing realities between faint rays
and the celestial dome

my sweet cries and pleads set into the sky
the atmospheric refraction
distorts all that is left of her being
an astronomical twilight will pass
and the dusk will swallow her wavelength

wandering into a new medium
surpassing the earth
and as the sweet color of peaches decomposes
becoming simple matter over time
her sun has set and mine will follow shortly