When I was a kid, my friend Chrissy had a big lemon tree in her back yard. We had all the games about eating them without making faces, etc., down pat, but our favorite thing to do was get a ripe one, cut it into wedges, smother it with sugar, and eat it like an orange.

And that’s what I am doing right now with my little LA-born lemon. I cut it into tiny wedges. There’s lemon juice and sugar muddled all over the plate and my fingers, and my tongue is starting to smart from all the acid, halfway through. It reminds me of being eight years old. It reminds me of being twenty-one and drinking my first Lemon Drop. It reminds me of southern California sunshine, on this dreary Seattle chilly-wind Wednesday. It is an excellent way to put off the work I should be doing right now. It’s making my tummy feel unstable on the inside…but I love it, I can take it, sunny sunny vitamin C tearing my insides apart. Prana! Life! Fuel me, burn me, make me sharp and biting, make me fast, curdle the milk that was in the latte I had this morning, turn me inside out! Oh lemon. Oh, lemon.

Sweetly sour,
Alissa