Peaches

The juice dripped from 
our chins,
downy pink mouths
like splotches of
chewing gum.


Our fingers were sticky
when we played tag afterwards,
weaving among the laundry
cast on the line in human form.


The peaches were bigger
than our hearts were
at the time, fuzzy and sun-warmed
from the tree. We ate
them all July long,
picked handfuls
and held them in the skirts
of our dresses,
white eyelet:
the fabric of summer.


Thick hands not yet
full of dexterity,
like our mother's 
piano hands, struggled
with the slick fruits
as we sucked at them,
licking like
ice creams,
but better.


Jewels in the center
we planted by the 
shagbarks on
the back property line.
Our secret peach grove
we watered with our growing
and talked to in the 
sticky evenings.


They never grew,
our orchard never
once sprouted, 
mother found us there
weeping like the whippoorwills.
Our knees dug into
the suntanned dirt.


We were not new
to the heartaches
that come with growth,
our languid limbs
melting longer as the summer
stretched its back
over us.


We were new to the
gift of birth,
our bellies full of
peaches, making
room out of those 
corners for babies
to grow.


We grew,
the peaches wilted
or never came up.
Our babies planted
the seeds under 
laundry lines
in June,
and learned the dirt just wasn't
right for 
that kind of love.