The Last Fruit

Prose born from this collapsing tree

Photo by Maria Teneva on Unsplash. Edited by Slaidey Valheim.

I sometimes smell it leaking out of me the morning after;
The smell of myself rotting from the inside out.

A familiar scent that crawled its way up from my parents’ basement on Sunday afternoons,

Hung on the breath of relatives that liked to lean in too close and whisper too loud.