The Peach Tree
☙ ❧

Posted in Poetry • August 20, 2022

Author's Note: I am currently uploading some of my old writing while I get the site set up. I originally wrote this poem in 2019, but have not previously published it.

The girl creeps up to the garden wall.
Pressing herself up against the rough brick,
she peers through a crack. She is not
supposed to be here. There is someone in the garden.
Someone is pouring vinegar on the roots
of a peach tree in the garden. The girl
watches in shameful fascination. She picks
at a bit of peach-pulp stuck to her arm.
She is not supposed to be here.
Someone has been coming
every night to the garden for three and a half
weeks now — the girl has kept count —
to pour vinegar on the roots of a peach tree.
The girl watches, wondering. Her fur
is matted in places with the sticky
dried residue of peach juice. She is ashamed of it.
Every night for three and a half weeks now,
the girl has washed herself in vinegar,
but the sticky dried juice will not come out.
She wonders if this will always be her life now.
In the garden,
someone is doing something strange to a peach tree.
Someone is pouring vinegar on the scar
where a branch was torn off of a peach tree.
On the ground in the garden, the girl sees
a fallen peach, smashed on the ground. Buried in
the pulp and juice are tiny fangs and claws,
and a tiny skull that could have been hers.