“The trees send me love letters on peach skins,” Granny said. “In their world language is taste. You read with your tongue.” She placed a peach in my hands, then disappeared into her orchard.

I licked peach juice from my fingers. Granny’s last words tickled my tongue: “Remember to compost.”

Mary Alice Dixon has taught architectural and landscape history, is a Pushcart nominee, Best Short Fiction nominee, and award winning poet. She lives in North Carolina where she gardens with cow manure, talks to tree, and communes with the ghosts of her dead cats, Alice B. Toklas and Thomas Merton.