Mulberries

By Meghna Mallik

The mulberries were planted by him; or so I’d have liked to imagine thereon. I will admit, it had been a while since I’ve had any delectable, glistening jar of smoothie fresh out of the blender blades. Any outline, the mere shadow of sugar, has been long laced out of this lonely pale of water.

This moment though, was different. It was fleeting, a scar of a second, that he looked over at me. I was just to turn around, he was just to shut the door, the magpie was to fly across the both of us, and I would have another woman buy a string of marigold from me. All that, yet I looked back.

“The mulberries have potential, don’t you think?” he uttered. They were the first of words he spoke, and historians would write that they were the last. It didn’t matter to me; for when has a sudden burst of citrus ever faltered along a set of teeth? When the crumbs of a tart cascade down your lips, what jet of saccharine syrup most lovingly gels your tongue?

The answer lies in the present. The spritzes of water that illuminate a bunch of grapes, or a flash of sea salt that is toppled down a cliff of ganache. You consume them thinking of quality, you cherish a first bite knowing how it made you feel when you imagined it, and you swallow realizing you might not be there tomorrow for a second attempt at that first bite.

“Oh yes, certainly.” The leaves looked as dead as the onset of strawberry season. However could I tell him? It was at this point that I was intentionally facing his shrubbery, in clear view of the pots of spices bordering his kitchen window. The lady who was to be my first customer in a day had gone. He smiled upon my response, and a new species of butterfly crowded my empty evening stomach.

The mulberries have potential…

“Do you think you’d have some water, sir?” He nodded into the singularly lit kitchen. Sir? The mango tree by the doorframe whistled an ear of disappointment, so did the wilted leaves now pressing into the night for a new life. “Here you are,” an arm extending the sweet nectar of the flower-selling class. As I gulped down, my fingers shifted the arching rim of the glass by the side so the mulberries have a chance to look at me again. That same way.

It was all, again, a second and a quarter. Where the water that slipped down my throat begged to be called a coconut’s lifeline, and the rim was as if laced by the bubbles of a noble grape. The air ruminated of a farmer’s market, the breeze called for a garnish of lime, and he looked over at me. Longer, this time. “Hope you get home safe,” he smiled, sweet as a thousand oranges for a jar of marmalade.

He shut the door behind him, and his shadow turned more animated as he walked inside. I turned too, my feet throbbing heavily with the pain of clenching against themselves for an eternity. I almost turned around, to see if he had too, but that seemed too far-fetched even for a fantasy I believed in too quickly. I would never know if those mulberries ever burst.

For now, if I ever again gather the strength to remember him again, it’ll be over a stalk of marigold. The crumpled up, sweaty buds that I was to sell. A flowery scent lost because some mulberries showed potential.

By Meghna Mallik