3 posts tagged “fast fiction”

When he died it was as though an apple core had come to my heart. I had not seen an apple corer in years. The last time I used one, I must have been 9. A red handle for apples that are too, sometimes read. Placed carefully in the utensils drawer in my mother’s kitchen, it shone with power beneath the shimmer of any window. A jagged tip for stabbing through the top of the apple and taking it with a wrenching twist. One fatal wrist to steal an apple’s essence; swiftly, mercilessly, thoughtlessly. With no inkling of what exactly it removed. For lunch, it also removed from me, my fingers to individually search my mouth, apple pips and their husks from the in-betweens of my teeth. The scent of apple on my hands, colliding with the musk of the coming of rain on a hot day.

When it was washed at night, the apple corer would lay beside the plastic, orange-coloured orange peeler. An orange peeler looks like a singular chopstick slash knitting needle; with a delicate hook at the tip for carving flesh. I knew instantly that I disliked these articles of careful design in my kitchen. They removed me from pressing my thumb into the soft roof of a mandarin to test its sweetness. Removed me from orange spray; the delights of sprinkled, bitter juice getting into my eyes from tearing through a map of orange peel.
I remembered these utensils well because I loathed their intimidating sophistication. Meticulous designs of plastic and metal, mocking me. Made by men to do things that my clumsy child-fingers did naturally. It made me despise my inadequacies.

Yet I wondered if he had ever used one.

Why do we need plastic orange peelers? Why do we need apple corers?

0328 hours

I wish I could love you in a cave. I wish that I could love you when men were still young. We would be still, in our cave while the ugly ancestors of tigers, turtles; irrecognisable, extinct animals (that are now black and unessential to the universe)... amphibious...hungry... scales and claws erect omnivours pad the outsides of our home. Where darkness is our door and space is our impenetrable lock to keep a frenzy out. I'd rather starve ourselves than be their bone pudding for tonight. I have better uses for him.

1215 hours

I scream, "Oh no, what shall we do!" In the days before feminism, I could get away with being so frail in front of him. It's my excuse to jump into his blanket of earth-smelling arms, salted and soiled from his bed. Kiss those lips, his lips that reach like vines that climb like ivy up my stalks. Only this giant can take me down. He makes my corpuscles shiver. Move in delight. In one lucid kiss and embrace, this man is a satellite transmitter to the stars and back!

0618 hours

The monsters, they go on knocking outside. Asking to come in. Stomping their feet and flaring their crusted nostrils while inside we lay, locked then were torn. They broke down our doors but I still feel him inside.

There is a vengeful ticking in my bones. It's counting down, for locked fingers from December to make an endless supply of locked embraces in June. The ticking; it becomes an impenetrable echo that bounces back, constantly, consistently - unheard, un-reciprocated. I could try yelling halfway across this Earth and then twist my hair knowing you won't hear me. I have a shield that is thinning yet I am brimming, tipping over a plate of pattaya in the late afternoon which I sleep until so there wouldn't be another morning without you. I would not have to endure another sunrise accompanied by the regurgitation of a scent, a sigh, a sight, a single caress. So I open my eyes in the afternoon with my breath still ripe from last night's alcohol, my lips still stinging from the taste of some subtitute with nary a name that could live up to yours.

Cheap imagination, you sway me so elegantly. You dance with me in place of a man. His shoulders are neurons and his laugh a daydream. Artificial intelligence, part nautical, part airborne. On the corners of my wrinkled eyelids I watch him float heavily from the view of a storming cloud, out of touch, out of reach. A good fraction of me is wasted always waltzing with a muse until I escape into night; chasing, using stars as stepping stones but nothing gets me closer save for this ticking in my bones.