Revised Piece- cut in half
It Will All Come Together in Quietness and in Time
She wakes up hungry for the sharpsourness of onions.
Her mouth is dry and yearning. Her lips are cracking; her tongue explores the way the flesh has split open to reveal something pink and soft and new beneath.
In a moment she will get up and he will find her by the stove, eyes leaking, sucking onion juice from her fingers. She will have cut one open and eaten it raw. He will not kiss her good morning.
For now though she is content to lie awake in bed, learning this new longing which has crept over her in the night.
—
She shakes him awake two weeks later. Says, hey, do you think that Chinese place is still open?
He throws his arm over his eyes, as if there is some light that is offending him, and says, do you know what time it is?
I’m hungry, she says. She puts her face to his hairline, mouths at his hair in desperation. Please.
He pushes her away and rolls over.
—
She can feel her body growing. She is not fat but she is solid, appreciable. He used to like her that way—but he does not like it now. She can tell that the stretching of her skin disgusts him. He turns away from her as she undresses at night.
Have you ever heard of Baloney-Os? she asks. He doesn’t respond, but she continues anyway: They’re Oreo cookies with the cream scraped out and baloney in its place.
She is standing in front of the mirror. She places her hands over her stomach, looks at it consideringly. At least I don’t eat that, she says, right?
He looks at her blankly. He says, I love you.
Actually, she says, baloney sounds kind of good right now. Do we have any?
—
He moves out when he finds her in the bathroom at 3 in the morning, furtively eating avocado dipped in spicy mustard.
I can’t look at you, he says.
So don’t, she says.
—
So it is almost spring and she is alone. For weeks after he leaves, she eats bananas obsessively. Something about the peeling away.
She carries the baby low inside her. It is unfurling the way a flower does in the mornings. She watches plants fighting their way through a crust of snow and thinks, that is inside me.
It is a new feeling. Not a yearning; something else, something more strange, and more welcoming.
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