Amalia Mayita Mendez, Tita's Kitchen (photograph)
And the whole mystery lifts like a skirt.
How you mistook your suffering for learning.
How you took the rock between your legs
as if you could make it a diamond
with enough grinding, enough prayer.
How you thought the summer
and its swollen peaches existed as metaphor
for your desire, teenage girl
for whom everything in heat
serves as sanction for your appetite.
How you ripped peach after peach at their crease
and sucked them over the sink
alone, imagined each boy watching.
How did they taste? Why can’t you remember?