WASTED ON APRICOTS

Coco-Lily Garrett-Kellett

He says apricots are the fruit of bad mothers. Says the fuzz feels like secrets under skin, soft and suspect, the way a lie feels when you kiss it. I nod, even though I love apricots. I love how they bruise when you touch them too long. I love how they rot in the bowl like something ashamed of being sweet. 

He’s in his truck, door open, one leg hanging out like a threat. The air smells like gasoline, hot pennies, and that syrupy stink of pickled eggs sweating in the sun. The southern heat isn’t weather — it’s intentional. It’s like the region itself is trying to melt you into something manageable. 

My gum tastes like blueberry, but no berry on earth ever tasted this chemical. It’s the flavor of denial in drag. My teeth hurt. My scalp itches. The vinyl seat has fused to the backs of my thighs like regret. I feel like a piece of fast food someone sat on and forgot about. 

My toes are painted red. Not slut red. Not cherry red. Exit wound red. They look too delicate for the ground they walk on, like they belong to a better girl in a better life. One with air conditioning. One without men like him, who grin like barbed wire and call you “sugar” like it’s a dare. 

We don’t speak. We simmer. 

Every Sunday I go to the Lester Van Inn and order the same thing: chicken-fried steak and a Diet Coke with lime. I never finish the steak. I chew it like a confession, then wrap the rest in a napkin I won’t throw away. It’s not food. It’s penance. 

Todd Lesterfield sits three stools down and eats apricots out of a jar. He says they help with digestion. He’s got a mustard stain on his shirt shaped like Florida. He smells like those pink soaps they use in public bathrooms — half-clean, half-lie. His apricots glisten in the light like orphaned organs. 

My mama used to say food tells the truth your mouth won’t. Said the way a girl eats tells you everything: how she was touched, how she was hurt, and what kind of hunger she believes in. 

I once watched a man cry into a corn dog at a county fair and knew he’d never love again. 

This town feeds on itself. This town marinates in failure and deep-fries its daughters in shame. The waitresses all look like they’ve escaped something. The men chew with their mouths open like they’re trying to un-birth the world. 

I eat because I’m scared I don’t exist. I eat because saying no is harder than swallowing. 

He watches me through the windshield like I’m a slot machine that owes him something. 

And me? I lick the apricot juice off my wrists and think: 

Maybe this is the miracle. 

Maybe I’m the fruit. 

Maybe I was never meant to last. 

Author: Coco-Lily Garrett-Kellett

Artist: Tia Shang