Bloodfruit by Abby Zhang

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 loveif 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 finishedand 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 headI dried and nailed to the wall as a lesson in achein 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 leakingthrough the fault lines as if even the fruit knew I wasmouth 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 chestand fold up her silences, moon-heavy.Wrap her in the napkin you forgot to placeat my side of the table.More from Abby Zhang ↓@abbyz.320 on InstagramShe is the Cofounder and Editor in Chief of The Sixth House a youth-led lit magazine, based in Montréal.