I thought about Mercutio the other day, out of the blue.

Perhaps, it was the paper cut, ever so slight, when

Mercutio’s fatal words dipped from nowhere, “A scratch…

but tis enough.” I wasn’t hurting that bad. Truly it was

a mere scratch, nothing that would set off a revolution

among my family and the family next door.

Perhaps, I was thinking about how dismal life can be,

all bottled up inside like my mother’s peaches she canned

in August of every year—tight and placed one by one

until they ached for space and light, room to breath.

Then the gooey juice dribbled over them, creating air pockets

that mother squished out with a regular table knife, moving

from side to side, pressing ever so gently, until all the bubbles,

pushed their way to surface and out. I was amazed

how a mere table knife could maneuver air pockets to dissipate.

Perhaps, for some, a mere table knife would maneuver their air pockets to subside.

Perhaps, for others, this mere table knife could be used for more

than just squeezing out life’s bubbles.

Perhaps, we could use it to spread the jams of the world,

across the wheat and rye breads of confrontation, those quiet ones

or maybe even the loud ones we hear about through CNN.com

and the rest of world that thrives on news bits, scrolling surreptitiously

at the bottom of newscasts on television and headers on the Internet.

Perhaps, my mother knew the simplicity of peach making

and that’s why she did it only in August, knowing full well

that if she did in other months, her life would surreptitiously

scroll along the bottom of somebody’s journal and she didn’t want

that to happen, just because it was her life,

her life, Mercutio, her scratch and no one else’s.