Morningtime by Samuel Lieb

Yesterday I woke up trying to fuck a lemon; the acid didn’t sting so bad as the last time. The juice was everywhere: on my chest on my pillow on the framed picture of my sister on her french-braided hair. I was on top, I was on my knees, one hand against the headboard and one hand holding the lemon in place against my linens. I push in some more and the juice burns my thighs and I picture me with this lemon, this lemon underneath me, but instead of what I see now—with my eyes, in front of me—I begin to realize that everything I do is only as an actor does when he is shooting a scene. It becomes clear that the director of this particular scene is David Lynch. David Lynch says to keep my hips way down close to the lemon, because when I raise them up I stop looking so much like a wolfy skeleton getting its fix.

That makes sense. I keep my hips down.

David Lynch puts above me a bright bright light and I start to sweat, my heart is pounding and my skin is translucent, I haven’t seen the sun in weeks. I ask him, David Lynch, maybe could I stop for a little while, it’s that my thighs burn like gasoline and sweat is getting inside of this sour sour lemon. David Lynch says no, says bite your lip some more, the light gets brighter. I feel the back of me start to melt from David Lynch’s bright bright light and the front of me is being eaten away by my juice (by my own lemon juice!) and soon all I am is sour and salty and hot and just a puddle under a spotlight on top of an empty lemon on top of my linens on top of my worn-thin soaked-through lubed-up memory-foam mattress pad.

Samuel Lieb is an undergraduate student of Hispanic Studies and Environmental Studies at Brandeis University. He was raised in Omaha, Nebraska and feels that conscientious small-scale farming is the way to a more sustainable future.