Plums

june 16, 2026

She is cutting plums. The plums are not particularly ripe and they will be sour against the back of the tongue and she likes them better that way. The cutting board is small and wooden and a little worn at one corner. The knife is the good knife. She is using the good knife because she is in no hurry.

Margot is on the couch behind her, ten feet away, with a book she stopped reading some minutes ago. The book is still open. Margot’s hand is on the page where she left off. She is looking at Astrid’s back.

Astrid knows she is being looked at. She does not turn. There is no reason to turn. She is cutting plums and Margot is watching her cut plums and these are both acceptable things to be doing on a Saturday afternoon in October when the kitchen has good light from the south window. The light is moving slowly across the tile floor. It will reach the cabinet by four-thirty. Astrid has watched it do this for nine years.

The plum yields cleanly. She quarters it and lifts a piece on the flat of the blade and eats it. The flesh is firm and a little astringent at the skin. She takes the second plum.

She thinks: Margot is going to stand up.

She thinks: Margot is not going to stand up.

She thinks: in a little while one of these will be true.

The knife passes through the second plum. She is being careful with her wrist. The wrist has not been good in two weeks. Margot has noticed this too and has not said anything about it because there is nothing to say. It will be fine again or it will not, and either way Astrid is going to keep cutting plums on the good cutting board with the good knife on Saturdays when the light is doing what it is doing.

Behind her, the book closes. A soft sound. Margot has not put it down yet; she has just closed it on her finger. Astrid hears the change in the room the way you hear a thermostat click. Nothing has moved. Something has gotten louder.

She slices.

She thinks about turning. She decides not to. The decision is small and pleasurable. She tilts her head a little so the hair shifts off the back of her neck. This is on purpose. Margot can do what she wants with the information.

The light reaches a brass nail in one of the floorboards and scatters. The kitchen gets briefly more lit than it strictly needs to be. Astrid puts the knife down without meaning to and then picks it up again. She is laughing at herself. She did not laugh out loud.

Margot says her name. Once. Not as a question.

Astrid does not answer. She quarters the third plum.

She hears the couch make the small noise it makes when weight comes off it. She does not look up. The footsteps are quiet, the way Margot walks in socks, and they are slow, the way Margot walks when she has decided what she is going to do and is letting the deciding be its own time.

The footsteps stop about a foot behind her.

Astrid puts the knife down. She does not turn. Margot does not touch her yet. They both stand in the held interval and the south window keeps doing what it is doing and the plums on the cutting board oxidize at their cut edges, going from gold to copper, and a car passes outside and inside the kitchen nothing has moved.

Margot’s hand comes to rest at the small of her back. Through the cotton it is warm and unhurried.

Astrid closes her eyes.

The kitchen is very quiet.

She still does not turn.

the move underneath this one, named: the watermelon move.

if it stayed with you, write to me.