A Peach Tree

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.