Ethel

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Ethel

Ethel

Look at all the HUrts of these Newly-Broken Lives and the Bittersweet, Sweet, and Bitter Loves

by
Exodus Oktavia Brownlow
Exodus Oktavia Brownlow is a writer, budding beekeeper, and a rising seamstress currently residing in the enchanting pine tree forest of Blackhawk, Ms. She is a graduate of Mississippi Valley State University with a BA in English, and Mississippi University for Women with an MFA in Creative Writing. Exodus has been published or has forthcoming work with *Electric Lit*, *West Branch*, *Denver Quarterly*, *F(r)iction* and more. Her writing has been selected for Best MicroFiction [2022 and 2021], and *Wigleaf* Top 50 [2022]. She is the recipient of the 2022 "The Changing American South" fellowship at the Writers' Colony at Dairy Hollow, and serves as an Associate Editor with *Fractured Lit*. Her debut collection of essays— “I’m Afraid That I Know Too Much About Myself Now, To Go Back to Who I Knew Before, And Oh Lord, Who Will I Be After I’ve Known All That I Can?”—is set to publish with ELJ Editions in May of 2023. Exodus has perfected the French Seam by hand, and is unequivocally in love with the color green. You can find her at: exodusoktaviabrownlow.com.

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from Look at All the Little Hurts of These Newly-Broken Lives and the Bittersweet, Sweet, and Bitter Loves

The Shed Cicada’ed-Skins of The Properly Peeled Orange

Baby doesn’t always eat the orange’s casings.

When all the pulped-out innards have been scraped out and swallowed, he pushes the moth hulls from behind his teeth, and leaves the skins behind in the bowl.

___

It has been days, months, and so many other things have happened since then.

The man who used to be something to the woman is an asker. He has found that without telling, he doesn’t hold much power over much of anything at all. He is a nothing man. And a nothing man is a man who discovers all of their lacks without several someones around them to fill their voids.

Baby is now the Big Man of the newer, bigger house.

The woman who used to be something to the man is willing to lose herself further. Not just the marriage. The older, smaller home. But also, to lose her before mind, in faith that something better will be found at the right time, with the right therapist. It is the first choice that she has made solely for herself in a very long while.

___

In the bowl that has been brought to the newer, bigger house. Days, and months later, the woman sees the clear casings, and screams.

She calls them shedded cicada skins and see-through crispies, like scabs that have been left out in the sun.

Not too long ago, it had been a pulpy-plumped petal-fingered flower, all tangerined-orange and bright, and had fit so perfectly in her Baby’s palm.

They have chosen not to remember what the orange used to be, because they are doing their best to move on with all the newfound-breaks of their newly- broken lives. They cannot afford to remember what was, only what is, and what could now be.

___

“Big Man,” ex-wife, mommy, she says. “I have told you not to...” her words going into, “Come on and throw this away!”

She has a stronger voice than before, Big Man notes, and he likes it a lot. It makes him feel that though he is the Big Man, now, he can still be a boy, be mommy’s son.

The skins shake in their bowl, muscle jump like a dead man who knows that he is dead but doesn’t want to die, and tries to spark the heart back beating.

Nobody cares about the orange, still, not even Big Man, anymore.

Even he has forgotten how it had once held such a sweetly-scented place in all of their lives.