Be Fruitflies and Multiply

Danielle Susi

Adam and his wife were both naked and felt no shame. When they lay in bed after twenty-seven mediocre minutes of touching and tugging, Adam allowed his wife to put her warm ear to the inside of his bicep. She rested her hand against the side of his ribcage and her eyes were wide and untired. With his right hand, Adam moved a fruitfly in the air that had snuck in from the slow-aging pears on the kitchen counter.

“Did you often use the word ‘esoteric’ before you met me?” Adam asked.

“No. Not frequently,” she said. “I must have taken that from you. You use it very frequently.”

“I’m hungry,” he said. “Perhaps we could finally cut those pears.”

“I’ll do it,” his wife whisper-spoke as she rose away from him and pulled on her robe.

As she sliced the browning pears, their sweet juices bled around the force of the blade and that blade circumnavigated the mushing spots too rotten to eat. One of the fruitflies that had been lingering around the bowl clung to a slice of pear and adhered to its flesh. Adam’s wife ate that slice, curious to know the bitterness of the fruitfly’s tiny abdomen.

© Danielle Susi

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Danielle Susi is a writer living in Chicago. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Storyacious, Squawk Back, Knee-Jerk Magazine, Lines+Stars, Agave Magazine, Midway Journal, Snail Mail Review, and many others. She is the recipient of a writer’s grant and residency from the Vermont Studio Center.

Read more by Danielle Susi in Rivet.