For a week, I fasted. After, only ripe fruit would do. 
We went to the woods earlier and touched. Beside us, 

swarm of bees & bowl of peaches: fragrant,
so that we would not stray too far from our bodies. 

Now that I’ve said this I must go back to my side of the wilderness. 
And still, from here, I can see the other selves: you, reading; me, nearly 

undone. The bodies not moving, the peaches firm, the bees pinned
into place. Everything soft and exactly 

the right temperature. Bath of honey
and pulp. A rib too small for a hive; language 

too glacial for what is between us, suspended in spools
of fine white thread: the light, 

exactly here, this moment. Knowing the bowl
will break soon. A bee will shudder. A cheek will turn towards the shade.

Published June 6th, 2021

Caroline Schmidt is a fictionist, poet, & recent graduate of the Rutgers University-Newark MFA program, where she studied fiction & taught undergraduate creative writing. She has received awards and fellowships from the Beinecke Foundation, the Vermont Studio Center, & the Stadler Center for Poetry. Her work is forthcoming in Colorado Review.

Mariana Garibay Raeke is an artist based in Gaudalajara, Mexico, where she was born, and Brooklyn, New York. Raeke earned a BFA from the California College of the Arts and an MFA from Yale University School of Art. Raeke has held residencies at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado, Kala Art Institute in California, and Pocoapoco in Mexico. She has recently shown work at Casey Kaplan Gallery in New York, Marcia Wood Gallery in Atlanta, and La Señora in Oaxaca. More of Raeke’s work can be found through her website.