The Day She Tasted the Fruit~ By Marzia Rahman

She looked here and there, and when she was sure no one was nearby; she plucked the fruit from the tree—a red ball like a clot of blood. She imagined the juicy taste and her mouth watered and right then, he appeared, frowning. She wanted to touch him, kiss him and do all the other things forbidden to them. She made a wish and blushed; a wild wish, and a dream, of course unattainable—but what if it became true? She was so immersed in her thoughts that she didn’t realise when she popped a segment into her mouth, and he shouted, what have you done … and she looked up, his eyes carrying the cadence of the crimson night. As they got caught in the midst of a maelstrom of fire and fury and the fruit dropped from her hand and they fell and fell from the face of heaven, she looked into his eyes and found what she was always looking for.


Author Bio:
Marzia Rahman is a Bangladeshi writer and translator. Her flashes have appeared in 101 Words, Postcard Shorts, Five of the Fifth, Fewerthan500.com, WordCity Literary Journal, Red Fern Review, Dribble Drabble Review, Paragraph Planet, Six Sentences, Academy of the Heart and Mind, Potato Soup Journal, Borderless Journal, The Antonym, Flash Fiction Festival Four and Writing Places Anthology UK. Her novella 'Life on the Edges" was longlisted in 2018. Her novella-in-flash If Dreams had wings and Houses were built on clouds was longlisted in the Bath Novella in Flash Award Competition in 2022. She is also a painter.