Lemon Tree

Our little hands longed for the lemon blossoms
right there in our front yard,
lily-white and fragrant like the expensive perfume
we saved for special occasions;
but Mama and Baba told us no.
We picked only the yellow.

Permanent yellow,
the sour truth behind the fleeting
beauty of its blossoms,
that forced us year after year
to pick the fruits of a tree we didn’t nurture.
We often forgot to water it,
but (to our dismay) the lemons continued to grow,
and we continued to pick.

We were told to be grateful.
It is a gift to own these, they said,
but it didn’t seem like a gift
when we had to pay the price
of scratched arms and sunburnt faces
for something that belonged to us;
it costs too much to pick yellowness
in a world that equates it to a global virus.

I know it’s hard, our parents would say, working alongside us,
but they would watch with knowing smiles
as our complaints gradually disappeared, as they always did,
when we smelled the home-cooked salmon seasoned with lemon juice,
saw the slices that spread like paper fans across our plates, artistic and
yellow,
just like the color of our skin.

-Anastasia Yang