April 27, 2021
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She drew still lifes. Still lifes on the verge of putrefying. On the verge of putrefying, because despite their fullness, their glistening sheen, earthy scent, she knew there was a seed of rot on the inside. On the inside, invisible to others, but harboured within, waiting. Waiting in the bowl like a dark sullen aubergine, light deflecting attention from its wrinkles onto its neighbour, a dimpled onion. “Dimpled onion”, she’d been called by a man. A man with too many layers to peel back without copious tears being shed but with a green shoot rising, she saw. She saw it was a bid for escape. A bid for escape from her and the faded butternut squash and muddy sweet potato of his root-vegetable family, a previous incarnation, that he sought adventure, was ready for a new life. A new life of self-perpetuation, partaking in the cycle of life and death rather than die with her in a bowl. In a bowl she drew him. She drew him still.
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Nadia Jacobson hails from London and lives in Jerusalem. She is a flash fiction editor at The Ilanot Review. Her fiction has appeared in Meniscus, Annalemma, The Binnacle, and a number of anthologies. She flips between writing flash fiction and revising two interweaving novels.
Photo by Jo Lanta on Unsplash
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