It was August and the tree in the back was pregnant with fruit.
My dad was never sure when it was planted but you liked to imagine
that it was always here– that someone had built the yard around it.
Your dad was a professor, but in the Summer he came out to California
To write movies in the house across the street. Sometimes
I imagined you with him– on red carpets or on planes. Every once in a while
I could watch the lights in your kitchen turn on when you had dinner. Other
times, I saw the lights turn off when you went to bed.
Every evening, though, you’d come over and we’d lay in the backyard
under the orange tree, sunbathing like the lizards we chased through the yard.
We liked to pretend we were grownups living on our own. I didn’t have a kitchen
to make you meals, so I’d pick an orange for you and peeled it,
handing you each wedge and when you chewed, you’d wrinkle your nose,
but always opened your palm for another.
My nails stung when I pulled back the rind, but it made you smile,
and when juice dribbled from the corner of your mouth, I wanted to lick it off.
As we grew underneath the tree, you’d ask me to braid your hair and let me trail
my hand up your neck and to your widow’s peak, past the sunburns on your shoulders
and the downy hair on your ears. We talked about how it felt to get older–
how we got taller, how we couldn’t quite understand the restlessness we felt at night,
how our legs stuck sweaty to the sheets.
Do you remember the Summer when the fruit the tree bore ran rancid?
When its skin puckered with sores and the juice stained
in the color of old blood. The Summer you traced the freckles on the back of my leg,
because that was the Summer I think I wanted you to.
We were in the back when our dads came over to check on the tree
and your father said the tree was diseased– that it was sick in its roots.
It was only Summer and maybe I swallowed too many orange seeds, but the pit
in my stomach bloomed to my solar plexus when I saw you.
Is that what I was too?
Sick in the roots? The way I might have wanted you.
