Lemon Bars

Lemon bars are in the oven

Well, not lemon

Tangelo

Picked yesterday and bursting with juice

Zipper skinned and biting tart

Everyone’s favorite citrus

Weighing down the tree their father never got to see mature

A tree rarely watered, never pruned, hardly picked

Almost ignored

A monster bush of thorns and dense branches and sweetened sunlight

But I love this tree

I get excited when the fruit gets heavy

Picking too early and screwing up my face when the segments bite back

Going goblin mode and peeling 2 3 4 5 in the backseat

It’s March now, peak season, and they no longer make make my ulcer sting

Almost too good to cook with

No real improving on what this ugly little tree produces out of spite

But I am still up at 6

Still dark

Slicing, zesting, juicing, stirring, mixing

It’s Survivor night and I am still quietly desperate to impress a family that I feel only mostly tolerates me

I asked permission to bake this

A labor of love that I spent hours researching how to get right

And even if it’s perfect…

(It probably will be, I’m pretty good at this)

I don’t know if it will work

They will eat, quietly, maybe

My brother - lemon bars are his favorite - might get excited

Please love me

But my sister will comment something that she usually prefers or would have done better

But she didn’t fucking bake them

And I know these familial titles are not returned,

But I will sit

Stoic, awkward, pretending not to care

Hoping that this time it finally works

This was just supposed to be a poem about oranges

Sweet, sticky, biting, precious, and fleeting.

I’m gonna tell myself it still is.