Vermillion
Sonya Lustig


The last pomegranate seed, tucked tight in the warm underside of her tongue, was an intact gem before she bit it so abruptly. A small drip of bittersweet juice made its way over under and through the shallow ridges of her bottom lip and spun itself back into a unified stream. A carmine colored trail, an external vein, unravelled at a steady pace down her chin, around her neck and to her spine. Each and every vertebrae left stained with a sweetness. The path continued, splitting at her lower back and extending down to her heels and eventually the velvet soil. The juice made an outline of a puddle and filled itself in, leaving the girl’s feet halfway swallowed. She folded herself over, dangling her bitten nails in the red, and sunk all the way into it until she was spat out again, half a globe away in the heart of a jungle. Her hair wove itself into the vines as she tilted her head back, admiring a familiar constellation and disregarding the sore sting of her scalp. The glue of gravity under her feet began to stretch, letting her drift only two feet above the ground but still all the way into a cloud of lucidity. And with a liberating sigh, an immense fog bank leaked out of her mouth. It was a carnation pink, a diluted shade of the pomegranate seed still dissolving into her molar.

 
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