Lemon Tsupryk Q1 #4: When you see me, picture this

 On a garden bench sit two people: one Small, and one Bigger. 

They are both squinting through the dappled light. Small stares at Bigger. Bigger stares off to the side, searching for field mice or swaying cattails or maybe a dragonfly—little armored angel. But they can’t ignore the smaller matryoshka doll nestled inside them forever, and so they turn, turn… grey eyes meet grey eyes, both pairs tired but one of them more so; dulled rocks weathered by the sand of time. 

Small’s eyebrows scrunch together like two thin, pale caterpillars meeting in the middle. 

“I still don’t get it,” they say in their squeaky, childish voice, “why can’t I play with the boys? The girls are mean to me.” 

“You’ll understand eventually,” Bigger looks away again. “Or—maybe not.” 

The two lapse back into silence; uneasy harmony: golden child—little angel, crooked bangs and crooked smile with teeth that won’t leave until they’re pried out by metal—and tall child—different now, with the apple bite stuck invisible in their throat while other fruit are used to describe the rest; peaches, melons, cherries…

How did one child start out as the other? 

All have soft flesh, but how come the fruit is always the woman? And how come the woman is always the rib? 

Bigger looks down at the overgrown grass, noticing Small’s sandaled feet swaying back and forth above the blades. 

“I miss when the ground wasn’t so far away,” Bigger says, “falling hurt less.” They think of scraped knees hidden under skirts, scabs so insidious pants were the only option. 

“I want to be tall,” Small pouts. “Taller than my dad!” 

Bigger sighs in response. 

“And I want to be strong! Stronger than the boys who make fun of me.” 

“I want to take my shirt off in the summer like you,” Bigger says. “Spry, yet-genderless creature darting through the house. Catching fireflies at night; scribbling lizards and bats in my notebooks before I had learned that snakes could hide in the soft white petals of magnolias—before I had conceived of the notion that I was expected to be the fruit dangling from the viper’s jaws. Long before the two roads split in the yellow wood and I chose to carve the third, my own. Was it worth it, I wonder, being cast out of the world’s harshest two-part system?” 

“Are you happier?” Small asks.

“Hm.” Bigger pauses; thinks. “I guess I am. But sometimes I wish I wasn’t shaped like this. Fruit.” 

“That’s stupid,” says Small. 

“Yeah,” Bigger says. “Yeah, it is.”

Both are me, past and present.
(Helpful context: I am non-binary.)
(Image drawn by me.)