He Peels a Peach for Me

He peels a peach for me using his hands

and a knife—the sharp edge slid under blushed

skin, the pink fur scraped away, fibres crushed,

fingertips separating flesh from fruit,

tendons moving like piano strings. Want—

some time has passed since I felt its meaning,

but I sense it now in his graceful peeling,

pale liquid licking stripes over his thumb. 

The peach is more than a peach, more than skin

and fur and pit and stem, more than the juice

collecting now in the divots of fine

knuckles. Gold on gold. The peach is question

and answer both, held tenderly in loose

hands and passed, bare and quivering, into mine.

First published in Fast Fibres 12 (2025)