Dwarf Citrus
Outside the grocery store you still looked cheery
in your small, red, plastic pot, slim branches hung
with fruited baubles and there I fought with
my mind, wondering of the home I could make
for you in a dark, wet country and also of your fate
beyond the weekend sale, your debutante sisters
lined up, the music of this ball the tills’ infernal
beeping. Of course, I don’t have to tell you,
I brought you home. We were careful: one fruit
to try, another plucked because it might encourage
more to come, their orange skins delightfully tart,
pores spraying that intoxicating oil into a world
made greater for their blessing. Soon, your branches
cleared in time for something of a summer—
when your arms lengthened into grace as if to gather
invisible ancestors. Oh, we were happy then.
To pretend to hold a second place within the one
we occupy. The expanse of love mapping the heart.
Winter turned early and your disease spread leaf
to leaf to stem. Someone else wiped down the shine
of your many ears. But, as with anything we refuse
to see, it returned. I took pictures of your pain
and ferried them to the garden center where
they huddled and researched, while at home
a blanket of invasive pink-brown dust held you,
thick and unforgiving. They were sure it wasn’t this;
they thought it might be that. They did not sell
the remedy. I found you as I’d left you—brave
and quiet on the windowsill. We went about our day,
and you yours. Later, when we have “time,” we’ll
order a potion online as if we are qualified
to administer it. We will wait two, three, four,
days in the calendar of your sickness.
Kathryn Petruccelli is a Pushcart-, Best of the Net-, and Best Small Fictions-nominated writer who holds an obsession with the ocean and an MA in teaching English language learners. Read more.