January snow falls wet onto grass still green. I’ve
always wanted to live in a warmer climate. Michigan’s
fate is semi-tropical in thirty, forty years. The lime
tree spindles in my kitchen, its leaves are gone, and one
juicy lime hangs from a flexible branch. The ball
drops lower, lower. Once I pluck it, will it be the end?
White mold creeps up the half inch trunk. Just a stem,
really. I spray the speckles with soapy water laced with
cayenne. These purple hours of in between—it could go
either way. Night or day? Life or death? Warm or cold?
I pull sleep like threads from an old sweater. Out
side the dark sparkles with cold flakes
and I breathe in the front yard’s maple promise
which I take to mean I have a future though the
trees only watch out for themselves. And can you
blame them? Come spring, the chainsaws march
up and down the streets, replace branches with
air and hundred-year trunks with grass.
“Lime Tree in Michigan” was first published by Masks Literary Magazine, Fall 2021: https://www.maskslitmag.com
Wendy BooydeGraaff's fiction, poems, and essays have been included in Great Lakes Review, Popshot Quarterly, Another Chicago Magazine, NOON, and elsewhere. Born and raised in Ontario, Canada, she now lives in Michigan, United States.