On Peaches {Christian Mechem} In my room, sitting on top of a pale-blue, chopped-up, just ugly little dresser, one that I’ve probably had since the first grade, is: a sandwich bag, containing one, single, solitary little peach seed. The seed’s been there for almost six months. The bag is sticky; its content covered with a slightly moist, salival resonance, given by the last person who ate its original container. That was me.
I remember when it first came into my possession, when it was complete. It was a peach then, big and fruitful. There was an ageless, almost ever-lasting quality to this object. It was sturdy, yet delicate. Its orange-yellow surface glistened proudly underneath the faint, desperate glow of my kitchen lights. My mom was gracious enough to carry it with her on the flight back from her old home in Sacramento, California, protected within a tiny cardboard box. When I first removed it from its carry-on container, I was immediately aware of its flawlessness. A supple, succulent aesthetic, that overrode its blatant presence of surface fuzz (an aspect of this particular fruit that has notoriously echoed throughout the aeons of adolescent humour.) To me, this was the perfect peach. Although, at the time I was also aware of what this meant; to me, my family, and the future. I remember just staring at it. From the moment the peach scathed the skin of my fingertips, I felt as if something had awakened within my body; as if there was some dusty, archaic light switch buried deep within the recesses of my mind that this peach found instantaneously, reaching inside with ease, determination. Click. And then there was ambivalence. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to eat it, even though I was hungry. I didn’t want to break it, even though it would inevitably rot away, someday, as all things do. So I kept staring, holding it, like an infant child. My child. My legacy. I didn’t know what to do, so I sat up from my slump in my mom’s kitchen, and drove over to my dad’s house, peach in hand. My dad had another late shift at UPENN hospital that night, I think, and wasn’t coming home until midnight. Or was it one? Two or three? Some late hour, anyway. So I get out of the car, walk up to the porch, insert key, go inside, walk through the dark, narrow front hall, pass the stairs, then sit down. In his kitchen. Now me and the peach are alone, accompanied only by culture and a fading pedigree... A little bit shaken up, I decided to place the peach down on the kitchen table, take a step back. I started to cry. Not a lot, just a bit. It was the first time I had ever snapped, in any variation, as a result of the circumstances that accompanied this fruit. It was somewhat of a surprise to me. I thought I would’ve shown more grief, spewed out a couple more tears, indulged myself into a state of perpetual mourning. But there were only a few tears. That was all.