Bitter In The Mouth: Pdf

The bitter ones were the worst. Forgive tasted like crushed aspirin. Return like dandelion stem. Mother like burnt toast scraped black.

“Why did you wait so long?” Linda asked.

Linda never forgot a taste. Not the flavor itself, but the precise second it landed on her tongue—sweet, sour, salt, bitter, umami—and the memory that came with it. She had a condition, though she didn’t learn the word for it until she was thirty: lexical-gustatory synesthesia. Words tasted like something. Porch was buttered toast. Telegram was burnt coffee. Her own name, Linda, was cold milk—thin and slightly sweet, but with a chalky finish.

“Who?” Linda asked.

“He died before you were born. Car accident. His mother—your grandmother—she didn’t want anything to do with the situation. So I never told anyone.” Her mother’s eyes were wet but her voice was dry. “I’m telling you now because I’m dying, and I’m tired of being the only one who knew.”

Linda stood very still. The word pregnant tasted like boiled spinach—green, metallic, a little bit good for you in a way that made you resent it. The word raised tasted like rye bread—dark, dense, crusted with seeds that stuck in your teeth.

“You came,” her mother said. The words you came tasted like flat soda—sweet once, now just carbonated disappointment. bitter in the mouth pdf

Her mother reached under the blanket and pulled out a photograph. A man in a navy uniform, smiling, one hand on the hood of a car. On the back, in pencil: Thomas, 1972, Norfolk .

“You said there was something about my father.”

She hadn’t spoken to her mother in eleven years. The bitter ones were the worst

It tasted like nothing too.

Her mother was thinner than memory allowed. She sat in a recliner under a crocheted blanket, even though it was July. Her hands were bird-bones wrapped in skin.

Linda broke off a piece of the photograph—just the corner, just the blue of the sky behind Thomas’s head—and put it on her tongue. Mother like burnt toast scraped black

Inside: a single sheet. “I’m sick,” it said. “You don’t have to come. But I need to tell you something before I go. It’s about your father.”