Peeling

By Sarah Kotchian

In between flight tracking
I wash and peel peaches.

Drops cling like mirrors.
I strip thin skins into compost 

golden slices cleave from pits
into the blue bowl; like you,

daughter of my flesh, flying toward England,
west of Chicago now.

In between peaches,
towels—washer into dryer.

I rinse my hands, check the status: 
your plane is over Newfoundland

not empty ocean. 
“Back to normal now,” my husband says,

but I can’t quite take sheets
from the empty bed,

scents of soft skin and hair. 
I fold warm towels, a tidy stack,

wash and pare
summer’s sweet fullness

as if bowls of peaches, 
fresh towels, flight tracking

keep your plane aloft, 
put flesh back on clingstones.

Now you’re over Greenland
curving south from Arctic Circle.

In the morning all have landed,
peaches, towels, sheets.

You call: Mom, it never got completely dark,
always a thin gold line on the horizon.

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Camino, about Sarah Kotchian’s 500-mile solo pilgrimage in Spain, received the New Mexico and Arizona Book Award and Seven Sisters Book Award. A contributor at the 2019 Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in High Shelf Press, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Tulip Tree Press, Persimmon Tree, Bosque Journal, ABQ inPrint, and on The Unruly Muse podcast.