White Peaches

Winshen Liu

For you, that week, we bought peaches like eggs:
twelve in a box, more than we’d had in years:

pink-skinned, white fleshed, portrait of Yang Guifei
in the morning, supple and unblemished:

the fridge became a vault that only
the right aunt, at the right hour, could open:

she sliced a wedge into tiny dice, rolled
into your bowl, no longer ceramic:

we watched them tremble and brown on your fork,
we relearned what it meant to be eager;

the dilemma arose when four remained:
six weeks had passed and so they wrinkled:

we each touched the peaches: but no
one was hungry, not even at dinner.