The tumor shows up the size of a lemon, protruding off her side. And soon it’s a Florida grapefruit, ruby red, looking up over the waistband of her pants.
Let’s schedule the surgery soon, her doctor says. Within the week, it morphs into a watermelon—which they cut, pink and seedless, away from her body. The large fruit floats above us like a giant beach ball—no, a hot air balloon, higher, crashing through windows, knocking down power lines. We crane our necks and still it rises into the clouds, swelling, growing, twinning the strawberry moon, rolling past the space station, floating upwards, the orb, discernible through telescopes, touching the ladle of the Big Dipper, tumbling past stars, big and vital as a planet. Mama lives on the ground below puttering in her slippers, hand at her waist, the wound healing nicely. Relieved, but also missing something round and sound and whole, once here, but now far gone.
Nicole Brogdon is an Austin TX trauma therapist interested in strugglers and stories, with fiction in Vestal Review, Cleaver, Flash Frontier, Bending Genres, Bright Flash, SoFloPoJo, Cafe Irreal, 101Words, Centifictionist, etc., Best Microfiction 2024, & Best Microfiction 2025. X @NBrogdonWrites! & nbrogdonwrites.blusky.social.
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