You Between Lemon Trees by Francesca Kritikos

PROSE

This wood that cooled my forehead
at times when noon burned my veins
will flower in other hands. Take it. I’m giving it to you;
look, it’s wood from a lemon tree
—Giorgos Seferis

We were lying down on the beach in our underwear, and you were bitching at me to make sure sand didn’t get in your lighter as I unclasped my bra and turned the music louder. You chain-smoked and I looked at the sun until I saw purple. Mostly I could never tell what you were thinking. But each time you coughed, I looked for the fear of God in your eyes.

Later we went all the way to the end of the boardwalk and I stopped to gaze at the little treasures being sold like names written into rice kernels and beaded necklaces and glass picture frames. I liked to imagine them after their faded luster caused their sentimentality to diffuse into sea-salted air, little broken pieces forgotten and buried in garbage cans, their predestined homes. I wondered if that’s how God looked at us. You went ahead of me and watched old men fish with your head craning downwards toward the vague tumult, only the water was too dark to see anything, and I wondered what you were really looking at.

We walked back after I bought a Jacob’s ladder and watched the wood blocks abuse each other cacophonously because I wanted to love collision like you did. There was a man standing in the sand where the splintering wood met the earth with a Heineken in one hand and a radio in the other telling me excitedly that he could talk to aliens. I wanted to give you to him. We left to get milkshakes. Then we went back to the rust-colored stone cottage on the beach.

I tried to sleep, but I couldn’t. Through the windows I watched you pace around outside smoking. I closed my eyes and clasped my hands together, praying for you to evaporate with the smoke emanating from your slack mouth. But your body stayed there, languorous in the humid air. In the center of the garden among the fat blades of grass there was a clothesline where our underwear was drying, strung up between two tall lemon trees. I watched you not hang yourself from it. It was impressive.

Francesca Kritikos is the author of the poetry-prose collections SWEET BLOODY SALTY CLEAN (2023) and Exercise in Desire (2022). Her works of poetry, fiction and nonfiction have been published in English, French and Greek in numerous online and print publications. She is the founder and editor in chief of SARKA, a journal and publisher focused on works of the flesh. @fmkrit