Slide Shows
By Isabelle B.L
The farmer caresses the baby’s freckled, green skin. Purple anthers straighten from their filaments and then slouch. Sunshine bounces off the sculpted glass. The anthers shift toward the baby pear, their white petals curl in, arch back. Clusters of white blossoms shake on this windless spring day. Upside down bottle hangs like a weary leaf. The pear is in foetal position, head down ready to be born—again. I hide behind another tree. The farmer slides and ties a ribbon around the bottle’s neck, trapping the baby’s brothers and sisters.
*
The baby pear’s skin turns yellow. Baby pear will always be trapped in immortality, numb to the season’s laughs and cries, gentle breezes or gusts of wind sweeping across the branches of dancing fruit.
Uncles, aunts, cousins, busloads of tourists, men and women in smart suits and inappropriate heels teeter across the grassy slopes. The spectators form a ring-a ring-o-roses around the glass leaves, and baby pear blushes—patches of red around its neck. I was not there when baby pear drowned in an intoxicating brew. Baby pear swims for the guests. Its future in mahogany.
*
Immortality is not normal. I am supposed to find the difference between oxidation and redox reaction but instead I calculate this. Free the pear, shatter its glass walls. I cuddle the bottle. Its coolness calms a racing heartbeat. I choose my cat’s spot of sunshine. Like the drop tower I swore I would never go on again, the oblong structure collapses on ceramic. Bare trees, leafy trees, orange, apple, pomegranate, lemon and pear trees erase crates of pear-shaped bottles sitting in the corner of the shed in a curtain of cobwebs.
The pear sways back and forth. I pick a plate with a white-flowered border. White on green. A ceremonial send-off. Blood smears on the baby pear’s golden hues. I cull glass. Once the tinny taste dissolves, I sculpt a Dante-like hell, purgatory and paradise. Sweet, seeing stars. I throw the core away. It sits among butter wrapping, potato scraps, cherry pits. I am happy. Very, very happy.
The scattered sharp fragments reach a terracotta square beneath the kitchen table. I will leave them there. When my father returns, we must have a talk about his farming practices.
Isabelle B.L has published a novel inspired by the life of a New Caledonian feminist. Her work can be found in the Best Microfiction 2022 Anthology, Writing In A Woman’s Voice, Rabid Oak, Grey Sparrow Journal, Coalitionworks and elsewhere.