Under the Lemon Tree

I’ve lost my grip on control. Yet here, under the lemon tree, somehow that's okay. Why would you keep a grip on all of the unnecessary things, when you can look at the sky and let pieces of your skin, bathe, in the seconds of sunlight that show themselves through the leaves of what you’d never realized, was such a beautiful tree. I used to spend all my time, picking at the grass below me, till the day that someone visited me; She planted a tree and told me to not be afraid, it was only a sapling, “it feels as you do” She said to me, kinder than all the rest. I’d kept Her there, because She was the only one who’d ever spoken to me, as though I, was someone to be spoken to. She taught me that other things mattered too, not just me, She taught me to care for the sapling, She taught me to love, then, when I did so for her, uncarefully, She’d seen it time to leave me. I fed the growing tree the tears I had shed, for Her leaving. Then someone else came by, a boy like me, we were young, but nothing of us, was free. He’d given me what I’d so desperately wanted from her, love, for me, so I gave what little I had left of hers to him. Then came to the realization, he was only visiting me, temporarily, so when I told him I needed to save my love, afraid I’d waste it all away. He said to me “I suppose It’d be best I go” I said no, “I suppose it’s best I cry” I said no again a little more desperately, “I suppose it's time I die” so I pleaded and cried, but that wasn’t a life I could save. Somewhere along the way, with a growing tree behind me, and begging words that scarred me, came a girl that skipped, so tragically laughing. she’d tell me stories similar to mine, she was a friend to share what little love I had of my own. she still visits me today, and tends to the tree, when I don’t feel like me. Older now I met some others, who smelled like cinnamon and took parts of me, plucked at the new leaves of the tree. No one will ever know who they are, cause it’s a secret game we play, one where they make me feel like I die, but I lie awake. I’d made them all go away, and take their little games, when I’d seen a taller visitor, make his way to me, he whispered his secrets to me, and I told them to the tree, now just as big as me. His secrets taught me new things, I’d never thought to believe in, things like believing in me, but with his whispers distorted, and no one for miles, who would be here to hear me, when he leaves me? So, I let him go, cordially, and he, unlike the others, said goodbye to the tree. Then a new group, a few came, not together, but they all smelled the same, like tobacco, trying to be monotone. They told me their stories, a little louder than the others, and with the tree now bigger than me, we leaned against its slender twisted trunk, for me to speak of those that had come before them. With little time passing, they’d learned the same feeling I had long ago, and they understood as I had, we were cyclical. They come back to visit me, habitually. Then, one after the other, three new ones visited me, with gifts, and tasteful things to speak. The first one watered my tree with rosewater to make the blossoms smell sweet, the second fed me toffee, sweeter than bitter rosewater, as he told me stories of its making, burning sugar, that melted, nerve endings, and finally one, with a bowl of milk and two vanilla beans, he made many promises to me, but the time was never long enough, for any of them to keep. We danced and sang around the tree, till the one with the toffee had to leave, and distraught I’d told the others to leave me too. Today is the tomorrow of that story, I sit here, and I weep, with the sun blessing me through wind-shaken leaves. Today is a day alone, but my oh my, at least my tree has grown. The tree was a lemon tree, and now I see the fruit, so I pick them, instead of the grass below me, only to realize these lemons weren’t all fed by the same themes, some bitter, some sweet, some sour, and begging for me not to leave. I reflect, under the lemon tree, that was planted for me, oh so, long ago.