She hated to cut into such perfection. Pressing the knife blade into the thick skin of the dragon fruit, the woman admired one last time its flamboyant pink and green gown straight out of a fashion magazine. It wasn’t fair. She sliced it cleanly in two. The inside was remarkably plain in comparison. Small black seeds suspended in a white gel, the same color as the marble countertop. A shame. She brought home exotic fruits hoping to bring a little color into the kitchen. 

The flesh was mildly sweet—pleasant, agreeable, but a little bland. She propped up the other half against the marble backsplash and gave it a small turn. It reminded her of the dress she wore at her husband’s last office social—a pretty thing. A little bland.

The next time she went to get groceries, she brought home a passion fruit instead. She wouldn’t have known what it was without the label. She’d had passion fruit stuff before—passion fruit drinks, passion fruit ice cream, even a passion fruit wedding cake—but never the whole fruit. And it didn’t look one bit like the shiny smooth-skinned ones she’d see online; this one was all wrinkled and hard. It was the most dispassionate, pathetic fruit she’d seen.

She split it open. The inside was a bright orange goo. And she could tell just from the smell that it was bursting with tropical flavor. 

+

She began to buy passion fruit whenever she saw them at the store, tossing one in the cart for herself along with the bag of shiny apples and pears for the kids. Her husband asked why she got them. Because I like the taste, she said. From then on, she ate her treats as soon as she arrived home, while her husband was still at work.

Empty skins piled up under her pillow where she kept them hidden. One morning, she looked in the mirror to discover that her own skin was wrinkled and had taken on a purple hue. She told her husband she had allergies.

+

Her hard, round belly could hardly fit into the pretty little dress. Her husband looked at her with disgust, said he couldn’t take her to the social in this state, told her to watch her diet. All she could think about was how much he looked like a strawberry when he was mad. As soon as she left, she threw out the purple skins in the outdoor trash can.

She tried to quit. She really did. For a while, she made excuses as to why she couldn’t go grocery shopping to avoid the temptation. She had a migraine, the youngest needed help with his homework. But when they went to the farmers’ market, she couldn’t help buying a dozen and stashing them in her purse. 

You look like me when I’m buying cigarettes, remarked the woman behind the counter. She blushed and paid.

+

The kids had gone to bed. Her husband was asleep. She hurried to the kitchen in her purple pajamas and dumped the contents of her purse on the counter. She grabbed a knife and set to work. As she cut away a tough hide and sucked out the juices, she felt her skin wither and harden. Guilt overcame pleasure, and she ran to the sink. 

Bright yellow seeds came out, as if there was nothing else in her stomach. She gripped the marble countertop, watching the high-pressure water swirl her vomit down the drain. She felt like one of the purple shells that lay strewn across the counter, empty.

But no, she was different. They were ugly. She was still beautiful. No, she was more like a dragon fruit—beautiful, mildly sweet, agreeable. Perfection.

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Radian Hong is a biracial writer from California. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Coachella Review, The Healing Muse, San Pedro River Review, and other journals.