The mail courier comes to the door to say she’s been watching
the peach tree for weeks, so I give her the fruit I’m most jealous of.
A friend’s analysis: You gave up a responsibility
I think? Or you gave away your vice. Now it’s delivered.
‍It’s early May. I pick peaches in the dark by smelling the red cheek.
I think I could have kids like this. Probably the most mundane
thing to do in early summer. Everything right now feels heavier than it looks
and that’s how I know it’s time to eat. I take fruit to the airport
to sweeten my appeal, but really, I distribute the raw fruit
so I don’t have to plan for the future. The airport
is on the other side of the forest. When I drive through at 4 a.m.
I can’t distinguish the tree tops from the night sky so the trees
take on an impossible height. I count 15 deer before I stop
counting. She asks, are 200 peach pits not enough? I say, I could eat,
though I’ve reached the point where any unripeness erodes my tongue.
Like the brand of candy we ate in the early 2000s and celebrated
for its total destruction, as we ourselves engaged in new warfare.
Then, I thought peach was not a possible Warheads flavor because
lemons and watermelon and apples are more transportable, more war-like.
This week, the U.S. Navy is engaged in live and inert bombing
in the Ocala National Forest, movements not far from where I live.
On Facebook, a man calls them “freedom seeds.” Mine too, is a comparison
that undercuts the exercise being prepared. Which is more violent?
The answer should be obvious, but I’m concerned lately
by how I grew up eating candy with a whitehead exploding
into a small mushroom cloud and how this is typical
of settler-colonial order—so much so that I don’t recognize the bombs
as bombs, but as something innocuous and natural, with a future.
The most terrifying deer are the ones in motion—doesn’t matter
if they’re moving away from the road or toward it.