Bloodfruit

Abby Zhang

Say it, like you used to peel blood oranges with your teeth, Ma.

The flesh splits soft and shivering under the pressure,

its rind stuck under your fingernails.

Juice spilling—

licking your lips with the same golden, bitter heat.

Let the pith cling to your hands, burrow there

like spoiled lace in the creases of your knuckles,

a ghost of a daughter you couldn’t bear to name.

Say it like an apology that came a heartbeat too late, sinking

into mildew buried beneath nailbeds, sour and white.

Too deep to name.

Too guilty to believe.

You can’t call it love

if the flower doesn’t survive the soil and dies trying—

You leave your shadow in the freezer beside the frostbitten peas,

between the birthday cake we never finished

and that bag of lentils you said you'd cook someday.

Your laugh long forgotten in the laundry with the whites,

now pink and fraying open at the edges.

I preserved your almost in girlhood,

placed it beside the sunflower head

I dried and nailed to the wall as a lesson in ache

in symmetry in what bends too far

trying to face the sun. The ache is old enough

to leave home but it lingers—

In the smell of citrus and ammonia,

in the violence in wanting something

at the exact moment it curdles.

The way rot hides sweet and ruin arrives tender.

The citrus flesh, bruised, half-fermented, half-forgiven,

slips in your palm, limp and leaking

through the fault lines as if even the fruit knew I was

mouth you left empty in late-night arguments,

over half-cold half-servings of tear-salted rice.

Say, Ma, you didn’t mean to ruin me.

Just once. Say it even if it’s a lie—

I’ll take the lie. I’ll eat it whole.

I’ve survived on less.

I’ll take the ghost back into my chest

and fold up her silences, moon-heavy.

Wrap her in the napkin you forgot to place

at my side of the table.

More from Abby Zhang ↓

• @abbyz.320 on Instagram
• She is the Cofounder and Editor in Chief of The Sixth House a youth-led lit magazine, based in Montréal.

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