FEEL
AS A CHILD I COULD NOT EAT ORANGES POETRY
BOOMERANG FICTION
Gabrielle Soria Oakland, Calif. Advertising major
Jay Gers St. Louis, Mo. Writing major, Creative Writing minor
I would walk past them at the market, oranges the size of baseballs, cloistered navels like scrunched mouths, babied and unsatisfied.
These were just moments. Simple moments. Like the time the dog ran away, but came back, proving his namesake true. Or the time she had wanted to kill herself. Back when everything was her fault. Or the time that he had hit her. But life had never felt as miserable as it did in this moment. Right now. She balled the grass in her fists and tugged at it. Lightly. Not even hard enough to uproot it. She thought the mound of dirt seemed empty. But it wasn’t empty. It was far from it. It held her livelihood. It held her everything. She didn’t know how she could have let herself love something so unconditionally. Why? Something whose voice she had never understood. Something so vicious as he had wound up to be. But who were we talking about now? The boy or the dog? Violence leading to violence. Viciousness versus viciousness. Or true nature versus true nature. She wanted to cry. Making tears come seemed impossible. Right now everything seemed impossible. What he had done. And what had happened. She almost couldn’t believe it. But she did. It was how the world worked. How it turned. Wasn’t it? Why? Why did it have to be him? Why couldn’t it have been anyone else. Some other poor creature could have died. Maybe he could have been spared. Why? Why were things never normal? And yet so common at the same time? The viciousness that he had possessed had been terrifying. She closed her eyes. Tight. Trying hard to make the tears come. She wanted to cry. She tried so hard. She waited, eyes pulled shut. Nothing. No wait! A sniffle. She opened her eyes. A sniffle. That’s all she got? A sniffle? How pathetic. She had always been pathetic. But that had nothing to do with right now. Or did it? He had gotten angry at her because she was pathetic. And because she always ruined everything. She had ruined this. She ruined everything. Even funerals. How could you ruin a funeral? She could.
Something about them repulsed me – the thought of my fingers running over their pocked skins, dusted with the spray of water every three and six minutes – sitting, moist and anxious, waiting for the cool slanted hands, the open palms to cup and cradle, to carry home – I couldn’t touch them, let alone bring them to my lips. But when, on the playground, one escaped from its paper bag prison, to roll out onto the table, I sank my fingertips into that secret place and pried open the peel, scraping and scraping with probing thumbs, until at last the thing sat, rocking on the rough boards as if in trauma – naked, exposed, and alive.
56
PORT CITY REVIEW
ISSUE 02
ISSUE 02
PORT CITY REVIEW
57
