Paradigm Lost Ruth Saxey-Reese

Ruth Saxey-Reese

If it hadn’t caught the light, sun sparking off minute black scales like embers rising from a smoldering pit, she may not have seen it, jet tongue flicking, weightlessly looped around her wrist, consumed as she was by meeting his gaze through the leaves of the low tree, burning in its own right,

but as she stretched to pluck one more rosy fruit from a high branch, she saw how it clung to her pale skin and laughed.

He doesn’t hear, bent now to lift full baskets, trudging them to the kitchen, bent on saving this small harvest from ravages of squirrels and decay.

She gently untwines the gleaming body, releasing it beneath a faded rosebush, trusting in protective thorns. With one rustle, it disappears.

Within, he washes and rewashes bright apples. She peers over his shoulder as the first skins coil away, dappled brown and white flesh revealing the lateness of the season, the question of worth, the hesitation of choice, his low voice speaking to itself.

They had smiled in the garden, alternately reaching and stooping, their bodies warming in the thin light, she enamored by a rare shared center, the intoxicant gathering of it all,

now, slick peels pile higher, slithering onto the floor, sticky juice congealing everything. She removes her ruined shoes with the slightest reptilian smile, slipping away from his fuss and toil over spoilage.

Reopening the door, she fades into the coolness, the last rays illuminating the blown roses, the still-green leaves of the apple tree, the final fruits too high on thin branches, delectable in their wholeness.