Rebecca Foust

Meyer Lemon

April 2021

Round & bright as a sung hymn,
the lemon is tinged orange, 
how I know what’s inside will be sweet 
as well as tart & that when I lift 
my hand to my face (as we are told 
never to do) I will smell 
that wild sharp tang that tells me 
like a shot star I may be dying
but am still alive. It makes a bell 
of my body, tolling love & memory 
of lilies blooming in ditch water. 
I’ve been trying to tell you about this 
since you left. The viral curve 
continues to climb & the wildfires 
to burn. I set up a feeder outside 
& now spend hours each day 
watching what I call The Bird Movie. 
I’ve been trying to tell you 
about this & wish I’d written sooner,
while we still lived together. 

All those months of silence between us,
looking away from each other 
while we both looked away 
from the stats & stacked coffins. 
Then, all the shouting about politics.
Living without you in our home
feels like creeping death, like losing 
my senses one by one. Some days, 
making masks, I press down 
on the pedal of my old Singer 
like it’s the trigger of a machine gun. 
I glean scraps from the garden 
as if they’re all the food to be had, 
or I’m like one of the Trojan women
always preparing funerary meats, 
albeit online. Some days in this empty 
house, I no longer feel even lonely.

Now, this sensory grenade in my hand.
Swollen & mellow like August 
sunlight, pebbled skin that squeaks 
& breaks oily, rubbed with my thumb. 
This sickle-sharp spray of glittery citrus, 
an atomizer aimed at my brain 
& igniting small body explosions. 
I wish I could share this with you,
& what I’ve learned, that to grieve 
the loss of someone you love, 
you must leave the body behind, 
succumb for a time to being stung numb. 
But while that is happening, the world 
will go on. Sunlight & rain 
will be spun into fruit, & in spring 
the air will be spangled with ions 
of lemon & longing. I can feel its mist 
prick my face. I am watching 
our love recede into the distance 
between us. But today the wind is warm 
& it smells of reasons to live. 

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