The Flesh of the Lychee

The Vietnamese woman on the street corner calls out to me, as she did this morning. The quang gánh — shoulder pole — presses into her protruding collar bone, and the fruits balanced in the basket roll softly against each other, like I imagine molecules do. 

“Beautiful Girl! You look so pretty! Buy some fruit!”

The shopfront’s neon lights are caught in the puddle at her feet and, as I weave between the traffic to meet her, a lychee tumbles forth from its cradle and shatters the pothole mirror. 

“Beautiful Girl!” she says again. 

I smile with my red heart and my red lips and point at the lychees. She gives me far too many to eat in one sitting and hands them over with warm, tired hands. The first morning I met her she held my palm in hers and whispered her name. 

Thị Lan.

Thị Lan knows that I don’t like oranges or apples, but that I could eat long nhãn and lychee for each meal and she always sends me on my way with a warm, tired squeeze on my arm and a farewell:

“Goodbye, Beautiful Girl.”

When I look at my doughy face and body in the windows I pass I almost see Beautiful Girl; who is sweet and dense and doesn’t mind the way femininity rolls down round shoulders and settles on a soft stomach. 

It is progress, though.

When I was Girl (though I argue I never was), I couldn’t look at her in the mirror, or in photographs. She seemed entirely alien. My skeleton pushed against her warm, silken flesh, searching for the zipper on my spine that might allow me to slip out and erupt. 

I think of her sometimes, on nights like this, when my shirt is low and the wind kisses my chest as greedy eyes stare. They don’t know there is nothing there anymore. I ate her years ago, splitting the tough skin with my front teeth to reach the fruit inside. But tonight, here, with the moon hiding behind low, yellow clouds, Beautiful Girl walks with me. 

She has become something I can bear to perform, but only when the streets are busy with smoke and sirens and my face does not feel my own; when my flushed cheeks are ripe and my proud eyes smirk: you can’t have me anymore. 

I wear her like it is an honour to perform again. 

I wear her like the neon lights that ripple down my body; like sticky fruit juice painting lips and dribbling down my chin. 

I wear her like I can wipe her off again. 

It makes it easier to leave her in the reflections.