the juice burns by Gauri Kumbar

I peel an orange the way my mother used to pray

slowly, thumb pressed against the skin, 

each tear a small confession.

The first time she raised a blade toward me, 

her calluses flushed raw and pink, 

promising that mine too 

would someday crack and harden.

She used to loop her fingers around my wrist, 

thumb and index pressed together in a kiss, 

seating me on the cold floor. 

No prayer; just her breath, thick with citrus and cardamom.

Through the cavern of her arms,

she drew the blade across my skin’s surface,

whispering, “fruit remembers nothing,

unless we carve the memory into it.”

Peels curled to the floor;

torn fresh and white;

lace threading through her fingers,

As juice bled from her lips,

sliding down the ridge of her collarbone,

hesitating in every scar and hollow

as though mapping old wounds.

She said the path of the juice

belonged to the branch that bore it,

like the final taste of death. 

Her mouth, parted and trembling, 

pressed the peel to my open palm; 

the salt and pulp sinking into me. So I drove the knife into her heart.

Seeds, scabbed in sugar,

clung to split flesh

until gravity jerked them free.

And I,

I tore her open.

Pulp under my nails,

rind clawed beneath the skin—

drank the juice.