We’d driven east for days. Left
the craggy shores and wind-beaten
cypress and the man I once thought
I’d marry all behind for desert, tall
pines, and the smell of sagebrush.
We’d driven along deep ravines,
red rocks, magnetic poles in the earth—
things that should have made me feel
there was something greater in this world.
But there was only the number of sweaters
in my suitcase, the dying plants in the backseat.
Now, I watch my mother through the kitchen
window. In the yard, she reaches
for fistfuls of cherry-sized apricots, tosses
them to her feet in a basket from an apartment
whose wall color I am already forgetting.
Bruises spread across the fruits’ creamsicle
flesh. Soon, they’ll be boiled and mixed
with sugar. Scooped into jars and let to cool
on the porch beside pots of lavender.
In the morning, I’ll spread the jam on crusty
bread, so grateful for their softness.
As we’d driven, my mother told me my skin
was beautiful, I had good taste in music,
so many skills. You may not see it now—
I bit the inside of my lip until there was blood
—a whole life ahead.
My mother stands very still as a female
mule deer paces the driveway. Her mossy
fur striped with sweat, the color of the hills
behind her. Neither expecting the other
in this place. Both in search of fruit.
–
Caroline Parkman Barr is a graduate of the MFA writing program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she served as poetry editor of The Greensboro Review. Her poetry appears in Best New Poets, Four Way Review, The Pinch, RHINO, South Carolina Review, NELLE, and elsewhere, and she was recently awarded an honorable mention in the 2022 Spoon River Poetry Review Editor’s Prize. She is currently an editorial assistant for Poetry Northwest living in Birmingham, Alabama.