What the peach tree won't forgive

Written by Alvin Su from Benjamin Franklin High School in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States

The basket’s ribs remember:

how calloused hands (cathedral pillars)

cradled each golden globe like communion wafers,

how the command was

Take

Eat

This is my body,

never this is my leaving.

Five years, seven months, thirteen days

since teeth last split peach skin,

since the attic swallowed every promised return.

Now the fruit swells with unspoken law:

she is fading.

The trees bow low; the crickets sing

their last.

Liar, chants the wind.

Liar, cracks the branch.

Liar, scatters the pit.

A mouth gorges itself rotten,

pulp bursting like sacrilege,

juice running down a chin

like that last summer of laughter

before the white uniforms came,

baskets full of needles and silence.

In the dim bar light,

the bartender buffs a glass

to a blurry halo.

Someone says:

We come from women

who swallowed their tongues,

women who pickled blessings

in fruit jars, women who left

without leaving.

Seeds spit onto the counter,

gleaming like knucklebones.

The last one clings to the knife,

the way the chemo took some,

the way the others still hide

behind her teeth, sharp

as a smile.