This summer is exhausted with holding me—
the swollen heat, my walls weeping blood,
the scent of metal-salt and strange soft petals like
a lover’s musk. I was thinking about Grace Millane,
the cool New Zealand summer kissing her
bare shoulder as she slipped out of the hostel
and into the dark starless night, hopeful,
a pink blossom opening on the thin dark branch
of a stone fruit tree. He paid for her dinner
before he killed her. She was not the first.
That’s where my nightmare came from,
bruising and quick like a peach in August—
the fear that the want will matter more
than the why. That peach and its delicate thin skin
splits, collapses into itself with a faint pop
like hands around a throat. Her history: a parade
for the jury to condemn. What will it take for them
to believe that Grace did not want to die?
Her history: a peach blossom collapsing into a drop
of blood. Petechiae bruising around bright blue eyes.
When I say my walls weep blood, what I mean
is that I invited a man home from the bar
and wondered if he would kill me in my sleep.
If he does, bury me under the peach trees
in the backyard of my childhood home. Let the pits
burrow into my bones. Do not let the jury believe
we wanted this. When the sapling sprouts
from my throat, pick the fruit that drapes
down and know that the veins of pink
at its center are what remains of our voices.
Bright blue eyes from her graduation planted
on every article about the rough sex defense.
Her history: a single dark night plucked unripe
from the thin new branches of a peach tree.