桃 / Peach

after Mizi Xia

Cardinal red caught in the salt-ached breeze,
the silk dancing through leaves. You lunged

forward like a wild horse in the middle of
Sunday green, the branch a traitorous kin

you threatened to behead. So you were there
waging a war against the wind and I was there

and I was bad at this, I admitted, because
you lost and the laughter poured out of you

like water lilies onto a lake, like an autumn
I could have lived in, that pink blush kingdom.

That afternoon the trees said 桃, caught me
peach-handed stealing sweet revenge for us,

that syrup and song, that tiny plump heart.
分桃, I said, holding it up for us to share

and of course I was afraid of the way your
teeth met the trace of mine like a ghost kiss

in a garden belief. You were close enough
then that I wondered how best to want you

with decorum, how to cut my sleeve to match
yours, how to watch you bite into a blossomed

butt and stop myself from imagining more.
Millions of 桃 observed us, the guardian magpies

in their nest of leaves when I ripened into you
nectaring and round. How you called me

beautiful, the flesh hanging from your lips. So
I waited years for you to choose me over your

wife because we were queer and unimaginable
and maturing into more. How quickly I forgot

公 is two stems away from 分, that a duke is still
a man inevitable with the leaves. I should have

known that 分 was a secret betrayal of meaning,
that it would change the moment we shared into

the moment that split us apart. All afternoon
I impeached the testimony of the wind, the torn

sleeve, the trees that shouted 逃 instead of 桃.

In the final line, 逃 is the Chinese character for escape and has the same pronunciation as 桃.

Read more from Issue 22.1.