of being in a lemon grove or something like a lemon
grove and there was a swing there and it was hard and
wide and wooden and in the sunlight dappling from
the trees it kind of looked like driftwood. We or maybe
I or maybe you swung there and I took a lemon from
the tree and bit down hard and the juice tasted like a
burst of citronella or the way the hardwood smelled
in the early summer and the swing kept going back
and forth while the juice dribbled down my chin and
someone called to me from the back porch of a house
I don’t remember. In the memory I turn my head and
there is only light and the taste of lemon.
Mariel Fechik is a writer, musician, and aspiring librarian from Chicago. She is the author of Millicent (Ghost City Press, 2019) and An Encyclopedia of Everything We've Touched (Ghost City Press, 2018). Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and Bettering American Poetry, and has appeared in Hobart, Cream City Review, Yes Poetry, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, and others.