God of Falling Fruit
By Lavinia Liang
A nut fell from the sky straight
into my teacup. There’s
something Newtonian about that,
said my companion across the
table. I could wash windows with
the kind of pain on her face, the
grimace held tight like bow strings
like horse hair like phone wires like
grief. Sure, I said. Anything is like
anything if you just say it’s so. Say,
she said, because she was raised
well and manners mattered to us
both. Wouldn’t you also want an
apple to show you the way? Say
you asked the universe, the god
of good things and falling fruit, say
you asked in a polite way, and say
you got what you prayed for.
The truth? I asked. A diagnosis?
Another way to say thanks?
Something like that, she said,
and glanced down at her cup. A
whole world was swimming there, and so was a bug.
Lavinia Liang is a writer and attorney. Her writing has been published in The Guardian, The Atlantic, TIME, the Los Angeles Review of Books, AGNI, and elsewhere.
