by Norie Suzuki
You sip coffee, wearing that suave, greasy smile you beamed at me when I first saw you behind the smoky grill. Placing a chewed pen in front of me, you smooth-talk me into believing there’s a season to everything and blabber on about us going through spring, summer, and then winter.
How dare you skip the fall? If you’re going to use the crappy metaphor of seasons to justify your cheating on me while I was busy breastfeeding our baby, your son, and persuade me to sign this divorce document, at least have the courtesy to cover our fall instead of fast-forwarding our history at double speed. Start from the time you cooed in my ears about me being the center of your universe, you liar, and drilled into my body to reach my core at musty, neon-flicking motels, setting me on fire, which Father frantically tried to extinguish, hosing me with “shame on you, pray for forgiveness,” while Mother silently shuddered beside him, as if she were the one drenched. When the holy virgin sisters branded me a fallen angel and expelled me from school to save the good girls, you said cheers to the hypocrites, let them savor the great combo meal of good riddance and salvation.
Listen. If your half-baked metaphor is a reflection of climate change, focus on the extremes. Talk about me hibernating at home, protecting your son from the coronavirus, while you were all summer, going hot, chasing that waitress’s ass, that slut who served me hot milk when I dropped by at your restaurant after my prenatal visit. Toothpick-slim when I was already nothing but a beer barrel. You think I didn’t notice her? I can smell a whore. I bet you had your eyes on her from the moment your dirty, old, cross-eyed boss hired her, or should I say season one? Don’t think you can fool me. I know you’re in the midst of season two, where minor characters like me are cast off in a dumpster, along with soggy fries, chewed-up spare ribs, and bland casserole you never learned to cook right.
I’ll tell you what. Seasons cycle because the earth tilts on its axis like this.
Coffee splatters on your gray sweatpants. Fuming, you shove another piece of paper in my face, the letterhead with a red cross and a heart at the center. Grabbing my wrists, you demand I read the underlined word. Aloud, you insist.
You think a high school dropout can’t read? Let go of my hands. Get that letter out of my face.
“Azoospermia,” I blast as the ink backfires on my tongue.
I close my lips, but it’s too late. The syllables jump at me like a hex, sucking up my power, awakening the baby from his nap. He wails, Papa, Papa, his marble eyes searching for his father in two opposite directions.
Norie Suzuki (she/her) was born and educated bilingually in Tokyo, Japan, where she writes and works as a simultaneous interpreter. She earned an MFA in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College in New York. Her work has appeared in Baltimore Review, Cutleaf Journal, The Offing, and elsewhere. She received third prize in the T. Paulo Urcanse Prize for Literary Excellence in 2024, and her work will be included in Best Microfiction 2026, the Coppice Prize anthology, and Profiles 2028.
