What Naomi Says, by xTx
They didn’t find the body until weeks later. Its hands chewed off, the rest of it torn through like an old sheet. Naomi said it smelled exactly like death should.
I ate the peach just pulled from the fridge. Its juice ran down my chin, cold, like, “Wake up chin! Wake up!”
My silence, my chewing, just made Naomi talk more. I learned things I didn’t want to. Things people reading the newspaper would never know. I thought of a giant mother hiding the eyes of its thousands of children. I thought, my life should have so many hands.
It didn’t.
I was left to see everything, thanks to Naomi.
Especially thanks to Naomi.
After all the facts and peach meat were spent, she stopped me from throwing the pit in the trash. Instead, she pulled me, pit-fist first, out the back door through the garden she’d left to die and back to the trees that lined the creek.
“There. Throw it there,” she ordered, pointing.
The morning paused while I wished for a giant mother with matching hands. Then, taking a breath full of how death should smell, I aimed at the thing, threw.
