The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Moon as Salted Lemon by Clayre Benzadón

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Hungering over / Solidifying into Succade

Back in Florida,
no room for fall.

I’ve learnt to neglect
all indications
of changing

seasons since
college.

The colors
of my mother’s cayenne
sprinkles, dashes

of turmeric powdering
branches of cauliflower

wouldn’t, at any time, be as vivid
as Massachusetts foliage

and I was thankless
enough to look out the window

rather than at my mom
when she served me a plate,

and to mash the florets
until they melted a burnt

rust—Miami felt
like it had decayed,

and so had I,
inside the city—

tiny sizzles
grew louder

from outdoor heat,
from our kitchen—

how I hungered
for autumn, clean
pulps of snow.

Sometimes boundaries
are set to mark seasons.

I was looking for that,
for another space. I hid

my simmer while my mother
heightened stove heat,

pot boiling quicker each
dinner, when she’d dish

me up and I’d twirl the food
on my plate, still gazing

off in starvation, in far-
sickness.

My mom eventually stops
cooking. We both cease
eating. I remain

in my room. She stays
hunched

over her desk.
We thin in distance.

The periphery between
us divides the tiled

hallway from my parent’s
bedroom carpet.

While my mom sleeps,
I slip a letter to her
under her door.

In the lined margin
I scribble: I’m sorry,
mom. I did not mean
to confine us.

I only wanted to
confide in you;
I miss
you.

I’ve already left the house
by the time she wakes.

She sits out on
the lawn bench,

flushed with saffron,
peach, imperceptible threshold—

in the canal underneath
her, the one she studies,
my face appears.

We meet. When I dimple,
it is hers. There’s a silent
simplicity that mirrors.

I tread closer, then settle
down next to her with
a secret clasp of lemon peels.

Even the shell of this fruit
can’t tolerate low
temperatures, but here

they bud,
continuously.

I wrap one around
her hair like a scrunchie,

then scrutinize it
candying in the sun.

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