Whatever I Saw in You by Karen Jones

I saw you in a peach yesterday. Fuzzy, first moustache, pink flesh, smelling so fresh. And yet, back then, you seemed like a man to my girl: tall, muscular, strong. You were none of those things, but it took time for the real, soft you to emerge from that sweet flesh and aroma that tasted so good. My first taste of all that was ahead.

I saw you in a croissant yesterday. I’d never tasted one until you to took me to that basement café with the cool art on the walls. Me, the girl from the village, the girl from nowhere, who had never seen original art, just the Constable prints in the gaudy frames on our council house’s artexed walls. You, the boy from the city, with the four-storey house and the artist brother and the actress sister and the lawyer father and the accountant mother.

I saw you in a kiwi fruit yesterday. I remember your laughter when you first gave me one, when I didn’t know I had to peel the skin, when I bit into the furriness, grued, spat, gagged. I remember your friends and family, manicured hands to mouths, snigger-choking, side-eyeing, judge-smirking. 

I saw you in a strawberry yesterday. Pitted skin, eyes hooded, nose alcohol red.  Your politician wife, perfect. Your children, haunted. Your family, infamous.

I saw you in a plate of custard yesterday. Yellow, thick, a sludge skin on top.

Now I only see you as a bullet – dodged.

Biography: Karen Jones is a flash and short story writer. Her flashes have been nominated for Best of the Net, Pushcart Prize, and included in Best Small Fictions 2019. She’s Features Editor for New Flash Fiction Review. Her novella-in-flash, When It’s Not Called Making Love is published by Ad Hoc Fiction.

Image: unsplash.com