By Madison Reber
I sit on the weathered brown deck
where the chairs remember how we sat—
my father and I—
watching the trees droop over
like skin hot from the afternoon,
cicadas stitching the air shut.
A clementine rests on my lap,
its pores begging to be torn.
I press my thumb in, and it bleeds,
revealing veins pulsing like worry beneath a wrist.
The scent rushes out—
citrus and August—
and suddenly he’s beside me again,
inhaling the sweetness
as if the smell could save him,
give him reason to—
Each wedge is a cathedral,
walls painted with citrus veins,
floors sticky with devotion.
I want to hand him one.
Tell him it’s enough.
Tell him I’m here.
But these days he is different,
like a rind thumbed too hard,
bitterness sneaking into the fruit.
He says he’s fine.
Laughs like he means it.
But I’ve seen him hold his breath
as if exhaling might break him.
I taste the sweetness anyway,
searching for his old laughter
buried in the pulp.
The sun both warms and burns—
I pretend I don’t feel the second part,
so I peel another orange.
Another.
Juice spills across my hands
like a memory trying not to vanish.
The gravity of this small planet
pulls me back toward him—
toward the father I am afraid of losing.
I eat slowly,
hoping he knows
I’m saving the last wedge for him.
Maddie is an English major from a small town in Georgia. Her writing is drawn to Southern Gothic traditions and explores memory, place, and the quiet ways meaning surfaces in everyday life.
