Jam Jars

Summer cherries
remind me of the 
creek bed with its 
weeping trees and 
slick rocks, we would eat the
red fleshes and 
spit the pits into
the stream.
Race them,
and yours always won.


Now I set the big porcelain
bowl out, filled with the 
red fruits and I remember
the jams I made one summer,
my kitchen covered in 
pectin and mason jars.


The pot on the stove was never empty
and the heat never did leave
from the place,
no matter if the screen door
is bigger now.
I still slam it to make sure
it closes, and it refuses to
take the abuse, swings open
when I'm not looking-
a child stealing butter
from the dish.


The parties with fruit bowls
and sangria, until late at night
under the cafe lights of my patio
we played drunken Scrabble and
I spelled out your name on 
accident. You weren't there,
and my bone chilled with
the alcohol.
Cherry pits littered the lawn.


I was carrying jam jars 
over to your own screen door,
past your laundry on the line
when your mother sat on the 
steps and wept big springtime 
tears not meant for August.


I dropped the jars and ran 
too far away to walk home,
so I sat in a field all night 
long, I swore you'd come back.


Nobody found me there,
in the infant corn
except grasshoppers.


The jars had broken and the jam
still spilled and crystallized in your yard.
It was cherry and I was going to tell
you stories from camp
while we ate it on buttered bread.


But I guess when you left
you were the color of our fruit,
and it painted your walls,
dripping through the ceiling.
She told me it was just like
jam. 
I wanted to put you in my 
mason jars.


The cafe lights flicker 
and I swallow more of the
acidic fruit- no cherries-
to drown out your name
I played on a double word score,
and retract my tiles for the
next round.


I never made jam again.