I’m eating her apricots.
They’re all I have left.
They’re fleshy and sweet and soft from time. The innards make my fingers and my mouth sticky. Every ravenous bite reminds me of her sweetness. But she’s long gone.
‘You’ll want these,’ she’d said, as she threw me the bag of apricots. That was almost a week ago and now, reluctantly, I agree that she was right. I didn’t want to eat the apricots, the last of our love, but I’m going to have to. I’ll intend to save one or two in her honour, but I know that I’m going to eat the whole bag and then all I’ll have is gut trouble. It’s one of those times in life when a metaphor imposes itself so strikingly that you can’t do anything about it. You know that you’ll fulfil the misery of the metaphor and your life will disappear down the wrong course.
I’m down to the last one already. I’ve eaten so quickly that my fingers are sticking together and my mouth is dripping with juices. The bag hangs like a sling shot, heavy with the last fruit. After this there will be nothing left of our love except an empty bag and my gut trouble. I take the apricot out of the bag and admire it. It seems to be the most delightful apricot that ever grew. It’s perfectly globoid, perfectly coloured, perfectly scented – a temptation of biblical proportions. It is without blemish bar a single mole near the stalk – like she has above her mouth when I kiss it.
She could have simply left me quite alone with nothing more than a goodbye if she had wanted to teach me a lesson, but she wanted me to suffer. She understood the metaphor. She knew that I would be forced to devour the apricots one by one as my hunger overtook my love. Yes, she knew about the metaphor already. She wanted me to see the bag and the apricots, to feel the pangs of hunger as they grew and grew, to smell the delicate apricots as they teased my taste buds. So she had thrown the bag down in the hole with me, after she pulled up the ladder.
‘I’ll be back in a month,’ she said, ‘If you really love me then you won’t be tempted, but if you don’t, then you’ll want these.’
Then she threw the apricots down.