Moldy Peaches

Moldy peaches in the air is an emblem of my fathers wounding

Family legacy vindicated in my mothers mothers’ kitchen

Moldy peaches lands bottom into her caster-ed wooden latticed high back chair

The type of chair that was built to last and kept for a lifetime like some things were kept in those days

Seconds, minutes, hours, nights and days spent playing gin rummy, listening to orations of my mothers’ birth and childhood circumstance sung under a blanket of decaying newspaper articles across table top

Moldy peaches and Patsy Cline stopping time and reminding me that sweetness is found in silence

Fuzzy, fat bottomed disintegrating fruit meat dna found home in my tonsils reminding me of what it will taste like to return to earth

Moldy peaches is why I will only eat nectarines and why, at memory’s start my mouth drips to the corners of my lips

Softening stone fruit illuminates the line of strong women I came from and marks the path to the spot I’ll return to

What I wouldn’t give to sit inside of a moldy peach today with Patsy

We would listen to the lady with the unfashionable ash on her Virginia Slim weave stories of how brilliantly powerful my mom was to the beat of our thumbs flicking the corners of our playing cards

I know Patsy, Crazy

Sometimes I buy a peach, lay it on my kitchen counter and never eat it