When Life Gives You Lemons
When life gives you lemons,
they never say
how to gut your rot
and squeeze your pain,
let it drip until it’s beautiful again,
distill it down into a grain,
and pour the bitter parts
down the drain.
Bitterness was my inheritance—
something passed down
seed by seed.
On each branch of the lemon tree
hang women like swollen fruit,
with puckered mouths
and tightened throats,
all churning the rinds,
turning yellow dust
into diamonds.
They turn brown as I touch them,
fade and bruise like memories do.
I think of them unravelling,
from pole to pole—
their bodies dented as they hit soil.
I choke on their pain.
It spreads like white veins,
and I feel their peel in my throat.
Every night I scratch their wounds,
dig into their flesh—
fingernails plunged deep
into jaundiced skin,
itching like citrus in a cut.
I try to peel it off,
scrape its pimpled surface,
but it clings to me
like fruit to a branch.
No matter how
strong the stem,
the knife wins.
Knives always do.
The lemons lay in a lonely pile,
waiting for the slaughter,
a sea of yellow faces like mine.
But I decide they will not die today-
today I will lay on my back
and let the knife segment me.
As I drip with the promise of being ripe,
I’ll drink every ounce of lemonade they made
and carry this sting alone.
Savannah Smyth is a 23-year-old poet from Northern Ireland. She is a third-year student at the Open University, studying English Literature and Creative Writing. Her poetry has appeared in Muse Pie Press, Superlative Literary Magazine, Sheepshead Review, The Words Faire, Poetry Habitat, Metonym Journal, ‘Breath and Shadow’ Fall 2025 edition, and the Fall 2025 issue of Inlandia Journal. She also received an honourable mention in The Dark Poet’s Club’s ‘Small Space, Deep Impact’ competition and The Dark Poets Prize Edition IV.
