Sandra Knisely - Bitter Almond Bee Spit

Sandra Knisely

Bitter Almond Bee Spit

We are leaving soon but I want coffee first, so I pull a plastic bag from the fridge and make Sam wait. I scoop grounds into my father’s old machine and notice that it’s dirty, lined with residue from last time.

Last time was the morning my roommate left to study streams in Montana. We’d shared a room for six years until that day. I knew things about her, like her urge to buy fruit but never eat it. She once left oranges on her desk so long the mold spread into the wood grain. Actually, she did it twice.

I remember her while Sam kisses me, tugging at my bra as water seeps through the grains of beans grown somewhere hot and steamy. They are almond-flavored, like the lotion she lathered over her legs and armpits to hide her scent. She only showered when the lotion couldn’t hide it anymore.

She was musky and beautiful with hair as dark as the sludge left in the coffee filter when the last drops trickle through. She washed her hair every other shower--it was a burden to get shampoo through her thick waves.

So I noticed one afternoon not long before she left that her hair was smooth and shiny. She was sitting cross-legged on a chair in the kitchen when I came home from work. She smelled wrong, like citrus. She must have used my wash.

Sam was in our bedroom, but he wasn’t in my bunk. He was sleeping with his face smashed against her pillow. I left before he woke up, she didn’t tell him I came home, and we three were never in one place before her departure.

I spoon honey into the coffee pot and stir, turning it homogeneous. I squeeze some into his mouth and mine and we suck on nectar and saliva beads cooled by a thousand buzzing wings.

I could have gotten under the blanket with him that day and put my face beside his on the pillow and taken in her smell. I could have picked her stray hairs off his shoulder and twisted them around my fingers. She may have come back to bed then.

She may have never left.

But I didn’t and she did, and all I can do now is simply lick the spoon. Clean.