dream

There will not be any peaches this year. The Japanese beetles have got at them again, whole orchard is full of their metallic buzzing and strange smell like honey and rot. My mother is speaking to me, yelling. I don't understand the words but in the roar of her voice I hear I am a terrible daughter. I don't care about my family. I don't care about anyone but myself.

So soon. Just minutes ago, just now, the peaches were little green bumps like fuzzy christmas lights, now swollen sweet, too ripe to touch and too ripe not to rot. Rain of rotten fruit and the ground is slippery under foot. My teeth are rotten in my head. They shift against the muscle of my tongue, I feel them move. They are hollow as the dead bodies of bugs, fragile shells.

I have to get help. I have to hold still. If I do not move my mouth at all, if I do not open my mouth to speak. If I hold my lips and tongue quite still, and breathe shallowly. I will go somewhere. I will find someone who can help me, a man in a white coat will glue my teeth back into place and they will not fall into my hands with a rattle, pearl-white and empty as husks.

My mother raging over me. She floats above the ground. Tall, taller than me, as she is in life still. Her hair long again, because I am a child. She flies towards me and hovers in the air. I am a bad child. I do not love my family. I do not love anyone but myself. There will not be any peaches this year. The peaches are all rotten and the bugs are in them, tunneling.

I will find someone to glue my teeth together. They will not fall, if I am careful. If I am careful, and I do not move my mouth at all, I will not move at all and it will not be too late.