The speaker is a peach, ripe and inviting on the outside, but deadly at its core. Someone strokes its skin and feels warmth, yet the peach knows what lies underneath: insects swarming, a "buzzing rage" that wants to break out of its "fleshy cage." The peach seems to stand for a person who looks soft and pleasant but is hiding pain, anger, or something harmful that could hurt anyone who gets too close.
What the speaker feels is a tangle of grief, rage, and warning. The repeated "I cry, I cry" and "dry, so dry" make the sadness sound stuck and aching. The seed is cold enough to numb thought, and the memories it holds, "summers buried" and "icecream dreams," suggest a lost childhood sweetness. The ending is eerie: a "last embrace" offered to the one who eats. The mood is bleak and unsettling, tender and threatening at once. The looping repeated lines, which return to the opening, add to the sense of being trapped.