The Blue Lemon
And every day we came in from the studio,
and every day the smell was filling the place.
We ignored it we commented on it we hoped that it would go away:
the strange citrus smell permeating every inch of the small garage apartment.
We checked the trash the refrigerator the garbage cans in the alley under the bed.
The milk began to taste of it, the cheese, the soup we made for dinner the night before
and warmed up for lunch,
a citrus taste, lemon, but no lemon I had ever tasted before.
Lemon beyond lemon, aged lemon, ancient lemon, the myth of lemon, the shadow of lemon,
the part of lemon that every lemon
tries not to be.
That was the taste.
That was the smell
that crowded around us like a skinny cat
every time we walked in the door.
But we were getting along fine.
Everything was great between us.
No problem.
We never had a fight.
We never said a harsh word felt an uncharitable feeling thought an inhospitable thought.
We made love often on the bed
in the lemon bedroom with the lemon breeze
blowing across us afterward and the taste
of lemon in the water that we drank to cool off.
There was nothing wrong with us.
Just that smell, that’s all.
At odd hours we checked the cupboards again and the refrigerator again and everywhere again.
Something had to be there. Something had to be
somewhere.
And yet it wasn’t there. We couldn’t find it.
So we tried to forget that it was there.
So we tried to forget that we could find it.
So we tried to numb ourselves to the taste.
So we tried to pretend there was no smell, and that milk had always
tasted this way. And then,
I remember it very clearly,
I opened the refrigerator to get something out, and once again I looked around in there to see if I could
see it, (I knew I wouldn’t).
And there it was.
In there, where we had both looked five dozen times before,
beside a bottle on the middle shelf:
a blue lemon.
Furry.
Dry. (I was so surprised it wasn’t oozing).
I threw it in the trash
and carried the bag outside right then, and threw it in the metal can at the side of the house
and closed the lid. Tight.
The smell was gone before the afternoon was out.
And suddenly I was out of money, and your patience was wearing thin,
and I could barely speak I was so depressed.
We both wondered what was going on.
Without the blue lemon to mask it,
there was an unmistakable smell of something gone bad,
and neither of us
knew where to look.
Bill Jeffers © 1990, 2013