Orange: Micro Series

Womb

Cat wants to paint her house fluorescent orange. Call it Crisis. Call it citrus combating scurvy. Cat doesn’t go outside much anymore. She orders in her groceries. She doesn’t answer the doorbell, and whenever the mailman walks onto her porch with another package, she hides until her heart stops thudding in her throat. Cat doesn’t sleep well anyway, so why not? Why not the brightest orange she can find? It’ll be like living inside sunlight, or a womb illuminated by sunlight. Like an egg yolk, spilling. Running free only to be held fast by every waiting crack. 

Seed

As Cat purchases cans of fluorescent orange paint online, she imagines someone lifting her house. She will be inside her house, inside her orange house, like a seed inside an orange, and someone who knows what they’re doing will hold her house in their palm (slightly calloused from carving birdhouses, or bones), and they will take a bite. Cat promises herself she won’t scream when she’s swallowed. No, it’ll be like going home. No, it’ll be like finding home again—cozy as a child in a fairy tale. As cozy as a little girl inside the witch’s stomach.

Fruit

Cat wasn’t always afraid. Before she decided to paint her whole house fluorescent orange, she had a wife, and they used to sit outside on their back porch every night as the sun snuffed itself in the mountains. She loved how the night held her body in thrall. But her wife is gone, and darkness presses against the windows with knives. Inside, safe inside her orange walls, Cat watches humidity pucker the paint until her eyes sting. She closes them, and oranges gather behind her lids. Orange trees for miles. Two different hands cupping the same fruit.