Citrus

I have been sitting here peeling this orange for five years, or maybe two, or just a few months – and as it unfolds I am waiting for that sweet fruit to fall into my hands – but instead it unlayers like an onion – layer upon layer of orange rind with no discernible fruit. I wait. I peel. I hope. But, alas there seems to be no fruit there, and I begin to wonder about the truth of fruit, sugar, diabetes, hope and sickness. All I ever wanted was to get to the fruit, to feel that rush of fructose as it hits the bloodstream, but I get rind, I get zest, and no fruit. I can’t figure out if the fruit is reacting to me, or if it is just me, or you, or another – or is it the rind that is all of us. I am trying to discern the nature of citrus in the middle of January. I might paint over the fruit and call it ‘soap.’ I might write something that has nothing to do with oranges and call it ‘citrus.’ I think I will put the orange back on the tree, attaching it with super glue and paper clips, and sit and wait a while longer.