The last thing I did for you, the only thing I could do for you, was peel you an orange. A little mikan mandarin, from the pile of sweet spheres brought by our neighbor Miyoko from her tree to your hospital room. I plucked one from the paper bag she left along with her regards, and, with its dry rustle still whispering in my ear, I dug my yellowing thumbnail into the soft bare button of the fruit. A fine mist of citrus oil sprayed us and we laughed, bright as the falling sun. Then you watched me from the bed, your gown as loose as your smile. My hands cupped the mikan and turned from each other like a prayer in reverse, a flower blooming as my thumb peeled back the skin to bare its orb. Rind removed from what it had so fiercely, gently protected. Heart tilting, I plucked the segments from their stem.
There, one for you.
Here, one for me.
There, tucked inside, a baby one, naked and awakened now as you once awakened me.
And here — a seed I set aside, away from your throat.
I think of your skin now, also loose beneath your gown, and your bones beneath your loosened skin, and pithy veins, so soft, and how I could help change your colostomy bag but had to blink my gaze away from the bumps of your spine when the mid-day nurse came to clean you. That’s my job, I’d thought, angry as I left the room for the privacy you wanted. But I had bigger jobs coming, didn’t I, jobs that became mine too soon. To peel you an orange on our last day. To see your loosening. To take that one seed we found, and plant it.
M.E. Macuaga is a Japanese Bolivian storyteller and escape room addict whose diverse work can be found now/soon in HAD, The Cincinnati Review, Epiphany, Seventh Wave, Flash Fiction Magazine, Oyster River Pages, Luna Station Quarterly, and elsewhere. Her communities include Hedgebrook, Ragdale, Tin House, and Storyknife. Read more: curiousstoryprods.com & @memi_writes.
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