By Kathleen MacGregor
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.
