August 10, 2010

sugar

Somehow, the season had nearly passed without a single peach.

She had gone for late afternoon bike rides, watched boys

swing warm-up bats on the high school diamond, walked a Cape Cod beach

soundtracked by gulls, and gone to sleep with the consonant noise

of a window fan. And yet, nothing could align her with summer

like that fruit, the brushed silk of its skin, the golden wash of flesh

meeting her tongue, that whistle of a pit. Nothing, really, could touch her

like sweetness. And she saw, as dewdrops of it now wove fresh

tracks down her chin, how quickly her own body brightened and grew,

and she wondered how it would be if she offered more of her sugar, too.