Plucked too soon

My high hopes for a good apricot in the East have been squashed by a pithy, tasteless ball of peach flesh. I miss my mom’s tree in the backyard. Fruit so heavy and plentiful, we could never keep up. The juice on the ground, the ants on the juice, the roots rich, drinking, recycling its own fallen skin. In this apricot, this East, sweetness is attempted and never realized.