The Scent of Orange

The Scent of Orange

by Armando Ortiz

Today I remembered those white hands, as I cut these oranges in half. The scent felt like touching fine silk.

You’d wake up in the morning with my hand tracing the contours of your thighs and we made fresh squeezed orange juice. The transparent yellow pulp would float to the top of the glass.

I also remembered the endless rows of orange groves that were hidden from view, off the highway.

My family would drive to Lake Piru and stop the car beside the road and everyone’d get off to pick a few oranges and fill a couple of market bags while cars zoomed bye and paid no heed to the city people that were picking fruit.

A lot of things are hidden from view these days, like your voice, which I carry with me always, and the mornings when we’d have breakfast together on the 17th floor of the building where you lived, hidden from the people outside below.

Somehow your breath is intertwined, like a braid of hair, with earlier memories talking to me in indecipherable languages, and I get lost, like my fingers did when feeling your Hellenic curls.

I squeeze these oranges, to cool my body and absorb its vitamins. The citrus scent you had that night was sweet to the tongue. The taste still lingers.

I recall riding my bike up the Glendale Hills, with my friends, where all the homes had orange trees in their backyards, and we’d stretch our arms and grab two or three, taking them and peeling as we rested. They were sweet and full of water, just like you were that day.

So many images that a simple fruit can conjure up is amazing. What will my future memories be mixed with is a questions that is better left for the present moment I am enjoying