I roll the last three peaches beneath my hands,
testing them for water. Watercolor fuzz tickles,
curls away beneath the paring knife. Here

I find the peach pit clinging
like an unready soul
to its flesh, wishing to bring along
riches stored in fibers.

There is another, floating free
within its body. A curve of steel
reaches the center and the pit rolls out,
cordial and without complaint. It is ready.

My hand curls around the very last, blade
easing through softness. My fingers find—
when the fruit is cut away—a third stone
cleaved in two. I think it saw the world
from within its cocoon.

The shock split it clean.

– Teresa Morse

Author’s Note: I find that my poetry tends to land me in small places, allowing me to dignify the unseen or rarely seen. In this way, poems become to me microcosms where I can create an entire world in stanzas, but where in turn that created world impacts my understanding on the world at large. The smallest moments, the slightest realizations, can affect one’s perspective forever. That is what poetry has given me, and I hope that is what my poems offer as well.