Yegene

17

My mother cuts peaches; first the skin
And then the white flesh that reveals itself
Like bare legs underneath khaki shorts
Pockmarked with mosquito bites

__________She cuts around the pit
The same way we cut the shape of ourselves
__________________________Around the thickness of the air
And the humidity that w a v e s along the electric lines

She separates the slices with the r i p
Of summer scabs earned by mad races on sidewalks
To see the final hardening of an egg
Its whites bubbling like foam on heated pavement

At the core, a peach slice is pink and delicately veined
As pink as the sunkissed edge of my nose and the hollows of my back
Slathered into a deeper magenta by the sheen of aloe vera
Until, grinning with the edges of sweet sticky sunshine
I eat a peach, in summer glow.