peachy
After “White Peach” by Toshiko Takaezu
My mother used to tell me to lean
into pain, because it’s the only thing
that can’t run away. To keep
desires bottled so no one
could pluck them, like golden fruit
from their stems. It’s so easy
to eat little things, she said one night, braiding
my hair. She didn’t leave until I nodded, neck tucked
under the blanket, hands fisting sheets.
*
At school, we learn how teeth rot under sugar,
how the origins of calories sparked from fire.
Study Biology diagrams of women, their soft curves spooling
off bones & onto glossy paper—the same color
of the cafeteria peaches we’d skin, then crack their bare pits
against the parking lot pavement. I remember how you laughed
the time I spilled its nectar onto my shirt. You gestured
to yourself, modeling your lips around its skin &
sucked, like its flesh held a promise.
*
Just girls, we dreamt of fingers
& fists of little men born from peach pits & clay,
always accidentally melting their lips into teeth.
Once we accidentally bounced from your mattress
so hard your leather-bound Bible hit the floor. You stole
a stick of lavender incense from my altar, held it between
your pointer & middle, brushing your promise ring. We’d pluck
the green peaches from my weed-infested backyard just before
they’d rot & sweeten them with Costco honey & smoke.
*
Your mother found us one night, peeked through gossamer curtains while she was watering
roses & prodded our necks with her antique silver forks, the ones with three prongs. Sat us down,
opposites across her dining table—white sheets that still smelled like Tide. She placed a white
peach on each porcelain plate & told us to cut cubes until their juices pooled, but we could only
suck on our forks, stare at each other and the distance between us: our hollow cheeks, our red
lipstick marring metal between white flashes of teeth.
Emily Pedroza is a teen mixed poet based in the Bay Area. She has been published or is forthcoming in Cargoes, New York Times Online, Alliance for Young Writers, and Apprentice Writer. In her free time, you can find her curled up under blankets or nursing warm cups of tea.