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The Orange Tree

Long ago, I had a dream.
It began with a smile that I recognized
from San Diego, San Mateo, and suburban Texas; a smile
that wells up from your throat and screams its joy
so loud it drives the crowd to tears. A dress
and my sharpest outfit, a white Uniqlo shirt and my silly charcoal suit,
that I put on far too late in a messy bedroom
I would clean after the ceremony,
which I returned to late as always. A crowd
of friends and family, the people I never managed
to fully trust, awaiting a first glance
at the person who would take me away.

Long ago, my family had an orange tree.
Mom, Dad, Laryn, Patrick, you remember
that it never grew any fruit. It sat there, a joke
whenever we thought of it, or whenever Molly decided to
hide behind it. And we forgot about it, until a day
when I was about thirteen when we looked out
the window and saw a single orange—
yellow at the time, it had yet to ripen—
hanging at its center. And on a day
just a year later, a baker’s dozen hung beneath its leaves.
I thought I knew we would never have a bloom.
I wonder if you did, too.
I never asked.

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