WiP Wednesday (on Saturday)
thanks to @lifemodeldecoy for the tag! wanted to share this for all of those who voted in my WIP poll for Instructions for growing … even though it didn’t win, I haven’t forgotten about it! … two different fragments for you…not fully committed to a specific structure for this one yet, so it’s just disjointed parts and pieces for now.
if anyone happens upon this and has there own WIP to share…please tag me … i’d love to see what you are working on :)
...
The fruit is still green. They are not ready yet. She picks one anyway. The thorn catches the tip of her finger. It's sour. Not lemon-sour, not vinegar-sour. Astringent and so sharp her jaw clenches involuntarily. She fills her left palm with them. Streaked with dirt, juice, and a thin line of blood between her index and middle finger. Six, seven, eight— Small and translucent and round and slightly furred. The seeds catch between her teeth. She guides her tongue to try and dislodge them. Something moves across the inside of her wrist. A caterpillar half the length of her thumbnail, longer when it moves. Speckled pale yellow and black, banded along it's side with orange. The front of its body lifts, reaches, finds the next inch of skin, the rest following in a slow contraction. It turns and continues along the edge of her thumb. Stops when it reaches the heel of her hand. The gooseberries grow warm in her palm, the blood dries between her fingers.
….
August is not generous. The heat sits unmoving. The garden slows. Sulks. The tomatoes split. Long fissures down the sides, the flesh going soft where the skin can no longer hold itself together. The ethylene that ripened them is what breaks them open. She picks what she can save. Cuts around the damage at the kitchen counter. Leaves the rest. By the second day the wasps have found them. By the fourth, they are flat and dark. She wakes at three with her jaw aching, the back teeth on the right side, the muscle along her temple so tight she can feel her pulse in her ear. She presses against it. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three— The heat breaks on a Tuesday. Break. Fracture. The word implies something clean. A bone snapping. A plate shattering. But the air does not snap. It thickens, turns yellow, sags until the sky as a whole lowers over the garden and finally it begins to rain.