I sat in my poetry workshop with a messy prose poem being critiqued by my peers and poetry teacher. There are mixed feelings about my work, and I rapid blink my eyes as they get misty. I'm not sad that my poem is being ripped to shreds because that's the point of the workshop, to improve my poetry, but because I wrote a poem about something that I thought I was ready to address. However, as I sat in my seat and wrote down the critiques in black pen.
Lauryn breaks the tattoo pact that her twin sister, Taylor, and I made with her the day after Christmas in a Brooklyn tattoo and piercing shop. Her new tattoo is small and on her ankle. When I text her about it, she texts back, "it didn't really hurt." But relays to me that her tattoo was sixty dollars and "overpriced." Her tattoo is of a peach.
She cried on my shoulder and I cried on hers. We do this for what seems like fifteen minutes, but it is only five. I let go of her, stand up, and walk to the back of the church. I didn't have any black to wear, any makeup on, and my hair is pinned. For the next hour, we look at her body in the casket and laugh at people's memories of her. I hug her again after the service. I hugged so many people after the service. She looks grown and tired and beautiful. I think she's officially grown up.
Taylor slides on gold rings on her thin long fingers, she wears an "M" on her right ring finger. Her Snapchat story is littered with photos of her and a woman who is always smiling. In these photos, they're always embracing in some way. Taylor and the woman are truly happy.
Our laughs echoed throughout the house as Taylor, Lauryn, and I retold the story of our first shopping spree together. We laugh about how we walked into summer camp bragging to everyone about how our aunt was coming to get us halfway through the day because we were going out for a shopping spree. I could barely breathe when Taylor demonstrated how we walked into the Boys and Girls Club like we were The Plastics with our new things from our shopping spree.
I swipe through my phone's gallery and look at two photos of a shopping cart from Target littered with junk food. I smile and remember when we pigged out on junk food, wings, pizza, and mac-n-cheese. We fit six of us on a queen sized bed and watched season sixteen of "Bad Girl's Club". I wish we had another girl's night. I know that there won't be one until we are adults.
Her name was Martha but we called her Peaches and she was sweet like one. In literature, a peach symbolizes immortality and she is immortal to us. We never forget our many laughs with her or the advice that she gives us. She let us break rules that our parents set and she taught us what it meant to be a kind-hearted, strong woman. Peaches taught us what true love was. She lives on social media feeds and profiles, Lauryn's ankle, in my poem, and on Taylor's finger. She planted herself in our minds and our hearts.
