Tanya Eats a Peach While She Waits for the Bus to Take her Home from Work, Tim Sections His Divorce Peach, Taylor Tells Himself Later that He Missed the Peach on Purpose—John Brantingham

John Brantingham was Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks’ first poet laureate. His work has been featured in hundreds of magazines, Writers Almanac and The Best Small Fictions 2016 and 2022. He has nineteen books of poetry and fiction including Life: Orange to Pear (Bamboo Dart Press). He is the founder and general editor of The Journal of Radical Wonder. He lives in Jamestown, NY.

Tanya Eats a Peach While She Waits for the Bus to Take her Home from Work

Tanya’s divorce-day finds her in an ecstasy of peaches. She leans over a bag filled with them, sucking and letting the juice drip onto the sidewalk and thinking my god, my god. All she can feel for Tim and her son is an infinite pity for what they are missing.

Tim Sections His Divorce Peach

Tim decides that this, his divorce day, should be perfect, so he slices his peach into twelve even sections. He wanted to make fruit salad, but these are too pure to share with other fruit. So he picks each one up and inhales, letting the scent fill him like love. 

Taylor Tells Himself Later that He Missed the Peach on Purpose

 In the garage, Taylor props up the big stuffed bear he got the day his parents told him about the divorce. He plants a peach on its head and plays William Tell with his darts. His bearson gets two in the face, one in the neck; the peach remains unharmed.