“Maria.” 

In my mama’s swollen mouth, my name sounded like hardened calluses, an unpronounced threat in every punctured syllable. I felt her circling fingers on my wrist, burning embers demanding that I stop staring at the ruby red apples in the market’s baskets. 

Finitudes crossed my mind as I pictured aching knots in my stomach and started walking again, leaving all the heresies behind. My mama grabbed the heartwood of the shiny cross of Christ on her covered chest, her mumbling voice a devoid prayer filled with broken words under crowded voices. 

She took my hand, our calcified fingers stuck to one another, wet palms pressed together. At home, our eyes would speak undistinguishable languages as she pressed advice into my fingertips like silver coins, an unasked gift. Her eyes always darted to the heavy-aged book centered in our house, its words echoing through my skin like a burdened pendulum. 

Only through labor one can be utterly free—she murmurs just to make sure I remember that being a woman means cloaking my body in submission and sacrifice. My mama wipes the sweat off her face, blending into the burning drop of light. I dissect my memory to remember the way her rhythmic movements caused the watery orange juice to pour out of its home, its bittersweetness coating the air. 

The orange required effort; there was no simple way to conquer its substance—the intricate peeling, the vicious cycle of squeezing every bit of juice until the skin was a mere remnant. One orange can satiate dozens of famished mouths, its citric taste eternally circling our tongues. 

Orange is a deed of God to feed its sons. 

I pretend I’m not betraying mama when I let my hands explore apples on sporadic markets, begging to be savored—the ripe, the sweet, the sour—a cider full of words. The apples hunt my dreams with images of open hinterlands, pulsing valleys, anywhere but here. I crave to feel my teeth biting into the sanguine flesh of an apple, to fully relish the knowledge of good and evil lingering on my lips. I want absolution, I want to taste blessing and sin as one—to feel life in its absurdity.

My mama saves touch like thirst as she waits for God’s mouth to drink from. Meanwhile, I am gasping for a love left behind somewhere between heaven and hell; raging for a kind of life in which the only thing I can hold is the orange juice sputtering out of the glass. 

Even God’s holiest water runs out. 

In the middle of artificial lights in multi-colored aisles, my hands precipitate into the apple basket. I stare into my mama’s glazed eyes as I bite into the seed-bearing fruit, following the thread of a blade. 

All I can see is the dusty cage of definition dissipating like smoke lifting in a soft prayer. I am a fallen angel, ready to explore the heavy scent of the sky, embrace the colors of earth, and wander free.