Second Place in the Ceiling 200 Contest (2021)
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Lemons
Sometimes your family is hopelessly incapable of sympathy. Like the time your grandma calls and says your great-uncle has a brain tumor the size of a lemon. You wander around the house with the phone, trying to think of a reply. What do you say? You barely know your great-uncle. He lives three states away and you only see him once every one or two years. Do you say “I’m sorry,” or “that’s awful,” or just a solemn “wow”?
You don’t want to see it but you do. A lemon inside his half-bald head. How does a lemon-sized tumor fit inside a brain anyway without a lump showing? A yellow protrusion then, sprouting a few strands of stringy red hair.
You still haven’t replied. Then your grandma says, “Maybe that’s why he was making all those bad decisions,” and you know that there is something terribly wrong with the two of you. A man is going into life-threatening surgery. Your grandma is reviewing his life choices and you are thinking of lemons.
~
Cassandra Sigmon is an English student at UNCA who enjoys writing poetry and fiction. Her work has been published in two student magazines, the Atlantis Magazine and The Explorer. Aside from creative writing she also works as a freelance content writer and digital marketer, and runs a blog on Medium at https://cassandrasigmon.medium.com/. You can also find her on Twitter @CassandraSigmon.