"The heart ripens like a peach",

he writes this on a paper napkin that blots the letters even as they form at the end of his fancy pen. Then he looks out, and sees the rain doing the same with his view.

The peach he is eating is ripe,

maybe even over ripe, for see how his teeth hook into the golden flesh, and juice drips from his lips' edges. But this wasn't so few nights (years?) ago when his mouth was rubbed raw.

"This peach is going direct to the heart",

he writes the second line, as blue ink spreads upwards to meet the first line. He enjoys these cheap early autumn peaches, their fuzz, and even the fact the state he lives in bills itself peachy.

The stone at a peach's center can be carved

(informed his friend, Tom, a few nights ago) into a bird or a cat stalking that bird. (His cousin did so with great skill, he said.) What about the heart's stone with its graffiti, its veined history of memory and erasure?

"A peach must be eaten at the right moment",

the final line follows, aphoristically, enigmatically. Is he referring to the moment when it ripens or to the moment which is ripe for feasting on a peach, (such as this) one in which love bobs its head like a cardinal, and his heart is again a peach?