Notes on a Perfect Peach

I bought a peach at a roadside stand in Georgia this August. One peach. It cost a dollar.

I ate it in the car with the windows down, parked in the shade of a pecan tree. It was so ripe that the juice ran down my wrist and dripped onto my shorts, and I didn't care at all. It tasted like honey and sunshine and the exact middle of summer.

The woman who sold it to me had told me, "You'll want to eat that one right now." She was right. I went back and bought a whole basket, and she threw in two extra "for the road."

There's a lot of noise in the world. Sometimes life is just one perfect peach in a parked car, and that's more than enough.