The opposite of sugar. The taste on the tongues of orphans. What remains on their plates. What burns their noses when they lean over the table, inhale through straws. Like their real mothers. Like their real fathers. Like the only people they remember. Orphans who ground it between their fingers. Flick it from beneath their fingernails at each other. At the walls stained from years of rainstorms. At the peeling wallpaper no one can afford to replace. At the rusty nail that’s claimed five of their feet. Orphans who let it run through their spread fingers like sand. Like the beach. Like they think beach sand would. Like the ocean. Like they dream the ocean would. One of the orphans has an idea. All of the orphans have an idea. They flood the girl’s bathroom, shed their borrowed clothes. Barely recognize themselves, their bodies. Their bare-boned bodies covered in white, their palms filled with it until it leaves them for the waves of the fountain, sink, and their toilet ocean. They swim and they laugh and they swallow it, their stomachs swelling, their throats and noses and eyes burn. Some will retreat while others stay and learn of the infections it causes. What leaves their bodies as they writhe in bed, dreaming of white whales and the sea, the only story they know. The one story hardly any of them can read. What those who retreated are able collect with rags stained with gasoline or cloth from broken toys. A teddy bear’s head. Sheets from one of the five. An article about unwanted children, where they gather, where they’re kept. The reason why some of the orphans are named mother or father. Depending on their floor, mothers will promise things will get better, that someone is always coming (they aren’t). Fathers will tell the little orphans to be strong, keep fighting, stop crying. The orphans who the little orphans call mothers and fathers will always lap up the tears of their orphans, their tongues tracing the way home. Their tastebuds drowning in seasoning and preservation and crystal and their lips crack when trying to form the word but, now, they will always remember how it sounds.

***

Avitus B. Carle (she/her) lives and writes outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Formerly known as K.B. Carle, her flash has been published in a variety of places including Five South, F(r)iction, Okay Donkey Magazine, Lost Balloon, CHEAP POP, and elsewhere. Avitus’s stories have been nominated for The Pushcart Prize, and her experimental flash, “Abernathy_Resume.docx,” was included in the 2022 Best of the Net anthology. Her story, “A Lethal Woman,” will be included in the 2022 Best Small Fictions anthology. She can be found online at avitusbcarle.com or on Twitter @avitusbcarle.