It was early morning, sometime in August, when she wouldn’t share her strawberry with me because it wasn’t sweet enough. I watched her against the big windows in the big kitchen that wasn’t ours, the tomatoes we collected the day before lining the windowsill. I remember her speaking under her breath about the fruit flies in the kitchen, which had been tormenting her all summer, and making traps for them with first vinegar and then wine. She would stretch plastic wrap over the mouth of a jar and poke holes in it with the back of her earring. I watched, through the same big borrowed window, as a young raven collected peanuts she put out for him on the back porch. We had been there for three weeks housesitting for a friend of a friend and settling into the domestic patterns set by them: feeding the cats in the morning, peanuts for the raven, a double espresso shared in the big king bed and a second in the sun on the back porch, a slice of banana for the bunny in the afternoon. She would make us eggs for breakfast and apologize because she knew I didn’t like them much. I would knock over the little orchid on the kitchen table again and try to write a poem about something vague like the way she kissed me three days before or something she said that hurt me. It was the early morning and she made me want to say small and imperfect things that meant nothing and then would discourage me from words like nothing and always which she would say are too absolute. She would play guitar in those sandals she bought online and didn’t like. In the early mornings she made me yearn in a soft and open way. In the early mornings she said most things were gilding the lily, like the way I looked in that dress she liked. 

We were sitting on the back porch smoking cigarettes, as we did in most of the in-between moments of the day, when she tried to find a spot for her feet that wasn’t my lap and I was hurt. Hurt by even this perceived distance. I watched what her face did while she considered whether or not to read something to me from her notebook. She didn’t read it. She put the notebook to the side and said every lover’s a peach and somehow you especially, and I believed even this little lie of hers. And I remembered then how I didn’t know her, not really, as she bit into one of the peaches we bought at the grocery store earlier in the week. They had finally ripened. I convinced myself we could never really know our lovers and believed this lie too as I licked the peach juice that ran down her wrist. She had friends over for a barbeque and we didn’t feed peaches to anyone else even though we discussed beforehand that we should. 

Her friends went home after staying too long and smoking too many of our cigarettes and not eating any of our peaches and as we were doing dishes she made the face she would make when she desired me and I figured I must have been scared by her desire or not being able to properly tend to it. But I wanted to stoke her desire. I wanted to kiss its forehead at night. I wanted to carefully brush its hair and then braid it so it didn’t become tangled in sleep. I wanted to spit her desire out like pits from the peaches we didn’t give to anyone else at the barbeque. I wanted her desire to become annoyed with me or call me a name. I didn’t want her to be cruel. I thought I’d remember everything we said to each other but there were too many good things and she fed me too many peaches. I wanted her desire to be redundant. I wanted all good things to be redundant. I wanted it all to be okay. I wanted everything to be a gilded lily except for her shoulders in that tank top which were exactly as they should be. I wanted her to stop cleaning the house and come kiss me on the sun-warmed deck. I wanted her to watch me eat that peach. She said one thing about her desire that I remember and another I forget. In the evening she said something mean and quickly said she was kidding. 

Another morning she blanched peaches and removed the skin and sliced them on her palm with sure fingers. She mixed the slices with brown sugar and almond extract the way she ate them as a child. She said she was making us something special and I filmed her doing it so later I would picture the video and not her and I would smell the almond extract not the peaches and not the mint she rubbed between her fingers and held to my nose and of all the sweetest pleasures she shared with me I hate to think what I’d do for one more afternoon like that. For her hand on my breast. She made me yearn in a round and closed way. That afternoon we fed the raven. We undressed the peach. We named it anything but love. 

In another early morning she will share her bed with another woman. In that early morning this other woman might kiss her shoulder. In the afternoon they might share a beer that she will squeeze a lime into. They might talk about me, I wonder. Maybe she’ll say what a funny little affair that was, that borrowed time, perching together all over someone else’s house, seeing how one another’s faces were affected by the light of different times of day. Maybe the other woman will be jealous of me. Maybe she’ll pity me. Maybe they’ll sit together into the evening. Maybe they’ll pull a string across the floor for the cat as I used to. She’ll give the woman her sweet smile. I wonder where I’ll be. Being held or not. Loving her still or not.

I’ll remember that night when we came home from the bar to find the bunny dead on the living room floor. She had been worried throughout the night because the bunny hadn’t eaten the slice of banana she tried to feed him that afternoon. She had been short with me that evening and I said it’s okay, you’re worried about the bunny and she said yes, I am and I kissed her somewhere on her shoulder. Earlier in the afternoon the bunny hadn’t eaten the banana and then, later into the night, it lay dead on the living room floor. We left his body as we went to smoke on the back deck because both of us were afraid to touch him and see how death had stiffened him but neither of us wanted to admit our fear. She cried. Maybe the other woman will know how to help her cry over all these little griefs in life. All the bunnies, dead or alive. Maybe she’ll kiss the other woman as she did me, maybe she’ll cry into her shoulder. Maybe she’ll love the other woman’s fall jackets as she did mine, that high-collared one that belts at the waist. I’ll remember that night how we smoked one cigarette and then another one and she wiped her tears and said funny, isn’t it, to be mourning the bunny and still wanting you. I’ll remember the way we kissed as the bunny lay in the living room and the next morning when we picked flowers from the school across the street and scattered them over the bunny’s body. I’ll remember the way we took turns trying to close his eyes, though we were both still afraid to touch him. The way we wrapped him in a white pillow case that had a hole in it and put him in the freezer. The way I so wanted to say the right thing to comfort her.

I was always careful to be good with her. To make her see that I could help her through something, through the dead bunny, that I was more than whatever desire had initially led her to me. Our fathers were in the hospital at the same time. Hers for heart problems, mine for lung cancer. I wanted to prove that I could grieve like her, present and full of tears and full of flowers to lay on the bunny. I wanted to be the raven she put out peanuts for, the fly she trapped with her vinegar and wine. I wanted to receive her love in an open and uncomplicated way. To hold her in the big broken bed while the bunny sat in the freezer downstairs. We always existed in the sunshine together, reading the poetry she loved while I pet her head or her leg, and by the end of the summer we had so many more freckles than we did at the beginning. I wanted to be someone who wouldn’t seek shade. I wanted to be someone who would be seamless to love. 

In the early morning she’ll lie with lover after lover and none of them will be me. Some early morning her father will die or mine will and we won’t hold one another and her tears won’t rest on my shoulder. I will or won’t see how her hair changes as it grays and how the lines around her eyes and mouth deepen. I will or won’t meet this other woman and see them in love. There will or won’t be a new bunny in the borrowed home. In some early morning she’ll hold a lover and describe their smell to them as though nothing’s ever been so sweet. In some early morning we’ll all be kissed with our eyes still closed. Or we’ll all reach to the other side of the bed and be surprised to remember it's empty. Or we’ll all wonder how to grieve, how to be loved, how to see the stars from this or that part of the city. We’ll all be afraid to touch the bunny and we’ll still cover it in flowers. In some early morning the strawberry will be sweet enough and the peaches will be shared with everyone at the barbeque. In some early morning I’ll miss her, in another I won’t. In some early morning our love will become another and another and another.