The Scent Alone

In my memory,

she is always in the kitchen.

The knife-edge taste of green onions

pressed in salt, eaten raw

or with a hard-boiled egg.

The scent alone of lemons

compels me to bite them

like she always would,

sucking the glistening faces

of their gemmy interiors,

inflicting bitterness on herself.

He, then, is down the hill.

The bristling chlorofilinous

scent of a snapped tomato stem.

The great, acrid greenness filling the still afternoon,

mingling with polished gasoline fumes,

grass clippings,

the raw plywood and oxidized iron of the shed—

which the family called the barn.

The sweat and the salt and the heat on the skin.

These,

the things that linger in the body.

Gone. Alive.

Vibrantly missing.