Bad Fruit

by Ella King

or if there was just something about me hating it that made it taste better.

reminding me that just once in my life, I’d like to do something worthy of drowning.

Mama knows about the poems, but she doesn’t know about the porn. If she’d kept tabs on Daddy’s little collection, she could have chronicled his obsession in pixelated print. It was always Asian—he was faithful to Mama like that,

“My little nonya, my favorite girl, my best girl,” and I want to snatch those words from the air, imprison them in a jar.

My breathing slows, my mind clears, a gift from my father, the certainty that what’s happening, no matter how terrifying, can be quantified, measured, solved.

Home, home, I want to go home, but not my home, some dream of home where I will cry and my mother will come.

DID I THINK I COULD have a nice afternoon like that without payback? Impossible. My family will extract their pound of flesh, and there is no one to prevent the shedding of my blood.

I understand her. I hate her.

“When does a mother switch from protecting her baby to destroying it? In the womb? Or is it later?”

Ten years later, my body still knows to cling to my sister; she will make me feel better.

know the topography of her rage, the contours of her vengeance.