Under the Blooming Buckeye

She sits under the trembling tree, next to the bike rack. Light dapples her paper skin, her white hair. She has kicked off her shoes. Her toes sing in the lacy shade. The tree is flowering, thick with a scent I can’t describe. Except this: It is her.

 

I unlock my bike, then turn back, assuming she’ll be gone like dreams in the light. But she’s still there, wiggling her toes, eating an apricot.

 

Already? I say. Are the stone fruit ripe?

 

She smiles yellow teeth. Turns up her face to the mottled light raining through the tree.

 

Don’t you remember, she says finally. Her voice is birdsong. I don’t know how I hear the meaning but I do.

 

Don’t you remember how you’d climb up to the roof, scoot down its slope on your bottom, risk slivers and—

 

And risk getting yelled at.

 

I never yelled, she says. Just warned of the danger. But I knew the allure. The fruit at the top of the tree, the first to ripen, turn that color.

 

Like a smoggy sunset.

 

Yes, that color.

 

And the taste. The trail of juice down my throat, sticky and sweet. And that other juice, blackberry and blood, when I took a break from her deathbed to wade in the bramble by the side of the road. Heedless of thorns, I gorged and I bled.

 

I always thought, I begin. She puts her hand up to stop me.

 

What I would’ve said, had she let me: I always thought I’d see you again. But the words are tumbleweeds, rolling across the desert. My life without her.

 

You’re never without me, she says.

 

I sit by her on the bench, bike wheels spinning on their side, sending shimmers back to the sun.

You look so beautiful in this light, I say.

 

You too.

 

She touches my bare knee. Her fingers leave a hot spot. It’s still there when she’s gone. The heat spreads up to my belly, where it settles like water.

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