My mother peeled plums for me in sick summers
The kind where the day and night were distinguished by
Tight-lipped horizons
That kept the sun from bursting Earth’s seams.
The fruits were dangled above, branches reaching silent across
From a neighbor’s backyard
Bloom – white and soft, like a layer of thin polaroid film captured a slice of the sky
Crested between the ridges of its sweet cavity.
The ones fallen, overripe, were plump
Like a neighborhood pool’s surface tension
As if the July sun had skewered its insides
And baked it slowly over suburban concrete.
She peeled off its thin skin, like a hangnail on water-wrinkled hands
And fed the fleshy pulp to me
Asking me if it was sweet
Lips smacking for me in phantom appeal.
As fountain water licked the carcass of the ripped maroon skin
Off of her stained nail-beds like a toddler’s manicure,
I spat out the seed, sending it into the gutters
Of suppressed seedlings beneath barred skies.
They taste like guilty freedom.