by Zinnia Smith
A beautiful sound: citrus season.
I’ve never lived anywhere. A hammock part in the shade,
part in the sun. We should move without reason
to a place with warm rain, midday. A loan with bees in
the lantanas and surprising places: screens, kettles, or dirty cups.
Listen, a beautiful sound: citrus season.
We will grow full under the lemon tree, breakfast and black coffee, ease in
to our days. How could I be loyal to one thing, if I’ve never lived anywhere,
part in the sun. So let’s move without reason,
See, look, there a soft color to be gathered, deepened
like emerald green and khalo blue, freeing us from fading eyes and
what a beautiful sound, citrus season.
We’ll fill up a bedroom with scrap paintings and linen, trustees in
lemons, the twist in our martinez, sitting in our kitchen garden dusted in rain and thunder,
part in the sun. We should move without reason
because what are we to do? Here, bodies are beaten
legs are crocked and old. Our mothers’ ghosts dancing where we cannot go.
What if we wake up alone? Filled up with a future awaiting…
for a beautiful sound, citrus season.
Zinnia Smith has been published with TSR: The Southampton Review, East, and Peach Mag, among others. She won Fugue’s 2018 writing contest in prose, and was nominated for Sundress’s Best of the Net in 2019. She is currently at work on a haunted house novel.