Paradais

by Fernanda Melchor

Leaning against the fig’s thick branch, he would close his eyes and breathe in the hyacinths’ faint perfume, at which point, never intentionally but unable to stop himself, he would make the same fucking mistake that he always did when he felt happy: the mistake of wishing that moment of solitary peace would never end.

For the first time in a hell of a long time he felt blissfully drunk; not pickled or tipsy like usual, but profoundly, melancholically smashed, steeped in a thick stupor that helped him zone out periodically from the stream of shit coming out of fatboy’s ass.