I went shopping for peaches
today, and I saw someone
that had stolen your smile.
They were remembering
some holy thing, no doubt,
by the way that their eyebrows
lowered like lapping waves.
And I’m sure that the demarcation
lines dividing the quadrants
of their face signaled that this
holy thing was holy enough
to make mountains out of mole hills
out of their gibbous cheeks,
rising up like tides at midnight.
I wondered if this holy thing
was the peach in my hands
and chewed on the question
of whether they would want
to share it with me even if
the sun was going down,
and even if peaches do not taste
as good at night as they do
when they are soaked in summer
sunlight. The stranger’s nose
answered for me when it stretched
down in some miraculous extension,
their cheeks kissing the lower
crescents of their eyelids. I rolled
the peach—good and ripe—
in my hand. I felt its give
under the pressure of my index, Georgia
flesh beaming honey and daffodil.
The stranger’s smile had fled
from their face, and I can
only assume that it found
its way back to you along
with that holy thing. Tonight,
on my drive to chase it,
I will break myself by looking
for you in the moon.
