“Premonition” by Emily Dyer Barker

The oranges were sweetest in the afternoon, around 3:00pm. Paloma knew this. She’d tried the fruit at various times during the day and kept a record in the notebook God gave her. More than the sweetness of the oranges, the notebook helped her realize how much time she had. There were many points of the day. Morning—noon—afternoon—. There was a luxuriance of blue sky.

To be honest, it was difficult to remember what had happened because the points of day were more like lines—going on in every direction. It was difficult to keep track of the shapes they made between them, how long each went on forever. She wrote things down in her notebook as best she could which is where she found the conversation with the fish. The note reported she’d washed her hair in the lake because it had been a warm day. Her hair wasn’t dirty, she just wanted to feel her own fingertips on her scalp, the way the water moved it in heavy sections when fully submerged.

She met the fish while sitting in the sun on a black boulder waiting for her hair to dry. This moment exists forever in many directions, but one of the things she wrote down is that the fish said, Salutation. Paloma said nothing. The fish’s scales looked warm. They were bright copper and green. Greet me, it said. Paloma said nothing. She reached out to touch it. She spent a long time with her hand on its skin, resting. She’d never felt anything like this muscle, scale, color, light. The fish said, We are alike. Our bodies are earths. They talked for a while about other earths, tortoise, finch, deer. Then—sun, moon. Paloma kept returning to the stars. Where are they? What are they? They are bright corals in the sky, small to us because they belong to other time. Paloma said she wished she could see them. They are where you see them. Paloma said she’d like to see them all day. The fish shivered. Her scales shimmered with joy, Yes, this is a good thing. Eat the fruit of the tree with the veined leaves, you will see the night more often—the stars will swim for you.

I will die, Paloma said.

You will live and then you will die.

Will it hurt?

Neither of us knows pain.

* * *

So different than the oranges she’d eaten, this fruit’s red flesh—swollen, only sweet, fragrant—surrounding the shrunken ovary. Its seeds, achene—small, dry, hard, attached on the outside at a single point: they don’t split open when mature.

* * *

Paloma remembered, later, her breath after the first bite. Full of purple. The bloody fragrance of oxygen.

She saw stars every day, but now time was painful and its minutes sharp with poisoned tips. She grieved its rainbow prisms of limitation. She was with child.

* * *

She could no longer talk to the trees, but they tried to explain—DNA and Your body will open. They said, We will attend you.

* * *

She believes they were there, but when her time came, she could only see the man. He was crying.

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The oranges, she remembered, had many pieces.

Emily Dyer Barker is a writer and artist based in Salt Lake City. Her poetry and fiction have been published or are forthcoming in Juked, DIAGRAM, and Hayden’s Ferry Review. Her artist’s books have been exhibited nationwide and archived in various special collections libraries. She is currently in the creative writing PhD program at the University of Utah and the managing editor for Western Humanities Review. She is a founding member of the Halophyte Collective.