Shawl with Bees and Sage

Because she wants joy, she changes her name to Peaches. She wants to feel like that boy as he watched the ball fly in the air in a park with dead grass and a broken slide. She wants to want again: the smell of rain on warm asphalt, the feel of granite threaded with glittering mica.

She wants to know about ripples, not cracks. Somewhere someone forgives and stops stringing the beads of betrayal. She is tired of forgiveness. She forgave too much: the constellation of holes punched in walls, the dark trail of his words, the hot swirl of electrons around his hand. Why do some things glow fiercely while others sputter? She will be Peaches. She will go outdoors and do Peaches things: wrap herself in an orange shawl with fringe and twirl, name the bees and map their movement in the velvet sage, idle with the stones. She will sing to the sky when clouds darken. That’s when it needs cheering up.