A Peach Without a Pit
More practice poetry of a certain ilk
With everything that happened, I was so frazzled. After his kindergarten flag football game. I just stood there. The attendant asks me do I have a number for their rewards program, and I lied and said no. The ten seconds it would have taken were simply too much to put it on with my chaffed fingers and my hair all on fire like it was, The flames are burning down into my heart. The frizzy ends, my toes aglow with the heat of anger and indignation. The swirling sickness in my stomach like an emptiness: A peach without a pit. The dome of the sky during sunset framed by rows or lines of thin clouds in formations set before time and by our own eye. And still yet I chafe more at this. And at everything.
This poem feels like someone admitting how a tiny, ordinary moment can completely undo you. There’s something painfully real in not having the energy to give a phone number — that quiet “I can’t do this right now.” The “hair on fire” image captures that mix of stress, embarrassment and exhaustion that hits out of nowhere. What stayed with me most is the emptiness described as “a peach without a pit” — such a small image, but it hits deep. You can feel the speaker trying to hold themselves together while everything feels too sharp. Even the sunset sky feels like something they want to appreciate but can’t quite reach. It’s like the world is offering calm, but the body is still buzzing with frustration. The poem captures that strange, heavy tiredness that comes from being stretched thin by life’s tiny demands. By the end, you feel the speaker turning that irritation inward, almost blaming themselves. It’s a quiet, honest look at how even the smallest things can overwhelm you when you’re already worn down.
Oooh I love this.