The Earwig Pit

Selecting fruit from the dish on the coffee table
you don't see
how afraid she is
of peach pits,
since that one when she was a child
and the earwigs
came hording out of the hole
where the stalk had been.
More than you could ever have imagined
would fit in that tiny space.
How their shiny segments
must have twisted together inside,
like a liver brown seed
waiting to expel itself
on a white cotton bedcover
at the first wet bite
and break into a myriad
of squirmy antennae and cerci.
She takes a peach from the bowl
as though she has never
seen a liver break into a river
across the white counterpane
of her mother’s bed.