Catherine Barnett

No woman wants to be low-hanging fruit, my glamorous girlfriend says, but I’m indiscriminate and love all fruit, I’m tempted to list each kind right here, in and out of season, because even just saying the names gives me pleasure, as does saying your name. I’m not alone with my passion — my whole family, we’re a little off in this regard, we can spend hours talking about cantaloupe or arguing over how many flats to buy when it’s Peach-O-Rama at the Metropolitan. Once I even drove half a day to get to Pence Orchards where I met and took photos of Bert Pence, who sold me three boxes of peaches at wholesale prices. He was so good to me, as was the late-summer freestone I picked as I walked back through the orchard in the August heat to the entrance gates, which were nothing like the Gates of Hell. On the contrary, I was in heaven there in Yakima. I can still smell that single peach, which was profusely low-hanging, it was the definition of low-hanging, it fell into my hands, as you did — or perhaps as I did into yours — but that was months ago. When I walked past the stands yesterday, on what should have been the first day of spring, all produce had been covered with heavy blankets to keep it warm, to mitigate harm. Today the temperature dropped so low someone thought to remove the fruit entirely and stash it away. With this strange weather we’re having, will I see you again? I can’t help myself.

My father scolded us all for refusing his liquor. He kept buying tequila, and steak for the grill, until finally we joined him, making margaritas, cutting the fat off the bone. When he saw how we drank, my sister shredding the black labels into her glass while his remaining grandchildren dragged their thin bunk bed mattresses first out to the lawn to play then farther up the field to sleep next to her, I think it was then he changed, something in him died. He's gentler now, quiet, losing weight though every night he eats the same ice cream he always ate only now he's not drinking, he doesn't fall asleep with the spoon in his hand, he waits for my mother to come lie down with him.

Ten below, high of zero, 4:11pm flashed the alarm panel’s handsome blue touchscreen. Without commotion or fire the afternoon passed slowly, full of promise, then disappointment. Without heartbreak or break-in. For company I had Kafka on my lap and Qolsys vibrating lightly against the wall. 4:34...4:35... There are all sorts of creatures in the world, I read, wretched, limited, dumb creatures who have no language but mechanical cries