My fingers barely close around the grapefruit.
I feel the weight and size of it, how the rind gives
And stretches and rolls in the palm of my hand,
The missing half of a long forgotten morning prayer.
This grapefruit is a memory, aged but precious.
I am a child again, sitting across from my grandfather,
Eating our breakfasts together. My grandmother
Always told me I could eat as I pleased for breakfast,
But grapefruit for him meant grapefruit for me, too.
By way of blessing, he nods firmly at me and we rip
Our sugar packets open, together, scattering the strips
Of pink wrinkled paper across the table.
In the grapefruit memory, he’s no longer as round
And laughing as before the first heart attack, but not yet
As sick and frail as after his fourth. He reads the Jonesboro
Sun from cover to cover, even the political pieces, which
Elicit mostly tsking. He says he can’t believe how red
The state of Bill Clinton and small farmers has gone.
Across the worn, handmade table, I sit quietly,
Chewing on the sweet and sour of the grapefruit,
And studying the lines of his cheeks and the sunspots
On his forehead, the anointing balm of a cotton grower.
###
Lauren Hunt is currently a law student at the University of Alabama. She graduated with a minor in Creative Writing from Pepperdine University in 2012. She was active as a writer and staff member of Expressionists literary magazine and hopes to continue writing and publishing in the years to come. She can be contacted at lshunt@crimson.ua.edu.
