‘Lemons’ by Kate Feld
On the last day of March I woke up with a clenched fist. In the front of my mind there was the feeling of squeezing a half-cut lemon in my hand to let out the juice but keep the seeds in. The little trickling sounds of the juice falling into the bowl, the pulp coming out at the edges, the rind collapsing inside my knuckles. It’s a cook’s shortcut for the kind of person who never has time to get the frilled glass lemon juicer from the drawer. My mother was that kind of person and so am I. How many movements, how many gestures, how many habits make a meal? I have always liked the way the edges between you and the food you’re preparing get blurred in the fugue state of cooking. I had been doing a lot with lemons that winter, making lamb stews with swede and preserved lemon, steeping lemons and ginger for tea, kneading kale in lemon juice until it softened. My lover said I tasted of lemon. I craved the slap of it, the wince of it, the high fine violin of it standing in for the sun which rarely shone. And every morning I started the day by squeezing lemon juice into hot water in the same china cup and drinking it. I read somewhere this is a good way to kick start your digestion. I got up out of bed on the last day of March puzzling over that specific memory of squeezing a lemon and walked downstairs and squeezed a lemon and sat down at my kitchen table and wrote about squeezing lemons without connecting the two. Maybe that’s all it was, my brain rehearsing the day’s tasks. But it made me remember something a friend said to me, years ago, about the way I lived in New York: ‘You squeezed all the juice out of that city like no one I have ever seen.’ I think about this a lot because I want to be someone who squeezes every drop of juice out of life and by juice I mean pleasure. Look at my fist, do you see how it tight I can make it?
From issue 3: autumn/winter 2016
About the Author
Kate Feld is a writer of short fiction and essays whose work has appeared in Neon, Caught by the River, Litro, and minor literature[s]. She co-edits nonfictionjournal and reading series The Real Story (therealstory.org). She lives in Manchester and tweets at @katefeld.
