the day was already a set of solved equations on the kitchen counter. run. shower. wake the child.

she stepped into the damp grass, the disciplined chill of 5:48 am a familiar pressure. the builder-grade pines marked the property line. she saw it immediately. a disruption in the pattern.

an apple.

its skin was a solid, perfect red against the dark needles. her mind, trained for contingency, failed. this was a fact without a category.

jon would find a wire, a prank from the neighbor's kid. she recognized the structure of a test. a parable made flesh. an impossible fruit offered by a power she had tried to rationalize away. an accusation on a branch.

the quartz counter held a sticky ring from a juice glass. a treatise on neoplatonism lay closed on the table. her body felt like a borrowed coat, ill-fitting and worn by another.

sunlight cut across the linoleum, illuminating dust motes in their slow dance. the baby's breath came in soft static over the monitor.

her mind offered the familiar escape. a cold, precise dismantling of the illusion. this kitchen, this body, this life. a temporary arrangement of matter.

instead, she picked up a lemon from the bowl. its waxy, dimpled skin was cool. she walked to the knife block. she sliced the lemon in half. the sound was a clean tear. its scent was acidic and sharp. she squeezed the juice over her hands, rubbing the pulp and oil into her palms. the sting renewed her.

her tweezers guided the beetle onto the curated moss. its leg was gone, a clean snip she had performed herself. the tableau required this specific flaw. a dead fly was affixed to a droplet of sap on a fern, a tiny black jewel. she saw where she had crushed a snail against the glass, its shell a fine white powder mixed into the condensation. the soil smelled of wet rot, a perfume of her own making. her breath fogged the glass, her face a pale distortion trapped on the curved surface.

arthur's jaw worked on the sugary grit.
his tongue felt thick, coated.
the first biscuit was an error. the third was a decision.

faint nausea rose, swallowed by dense, unfamiliar pleasure.
his thoughts moved like treacle.
the discipline that had been a scaffold felt constricting.

his stomach softened.
a dull ache spread in his temples.
a whisper of self-loathing.
then, a deeper, unsettling current.

this loosening.
this fall.
there was a texture to it, coarse and compelling.

he looked at his own hand, plumped slightly at the palm, and a strange thrill, cold and sharp, pricked him.
this ruin held its own dark sweetness.

someone who sells artisanal honey at farmers markets, all beeswax candles and gentle smiles.
her name is probably agnes, or something soft like that.

she keeps her hives deep in poison ivy so dense it's a fortress.
the bees are meaner, wired.
the honey they make is dark, almost black, with a bitter, metallic tang that makes your molars ache and your pupils dilate just a fraction.
she tells people it's 'forest blossom', very rare.
privately, she eats it by the spoonful, feeling it light up her nerve endings, a slow, toxic burn she craves more than air.
the honey makes things vivid.
too vivid.
the colors of the market, the whispers of the customers, they all sharpen into something unbearable, something she needs the honey to face.

the air thinned out around their painted smiles.
i saw the flimsy stagecraft.
this thing inside, this hungry, coiling heat, i'd always tried to smother it.
now i feed it.
let it burn through the floorboards.
this is the only warmth with teeth.
i need the grit, the claw marks of my own passage.
my own disgust, my raw want, i braid them tight.
a goad. a grappling hook.
i'll conjure power from the parts they told me to bury.