At our first class post-election,
a student brings in clementines,
and my professor reads a poem
about living
in your country and forgiveness and war.
Her voice cracks,
and then she hands out chocolate.
Later, I take the peel from the fruit,
turn it into a Koi Fish,
make it swim toward the woman
who cares about our Vitamin C.
She laughs,
and her head falls on my shoulder.
I laugh, too.
In the room,
a woman in a plum dress,
a green sweater.
The man in the helmet
who thinks I’m worth fighting for.
On the table,
a mason jar filled with something red.
There is a difference between
complacency and healing—
of normalizing,
of finding a reason
to get up out of bed.
And there is much to say
about the night I watched
the map turn.
The night I learned
with new found clarity
that my country wanted
nothing of me.
But there is something to be said
about a circle in the grass,
about leaning on a shoulder.
And there is something to be said
about a poem,
about chocolate,
about citrus and healing.
Diana Clark is an elephant enthusiast and a first-year fiction writer at UNCW, with special love for LGBTQIA+ literature, magical realism, and sci-fi. You can find her work over at the St. Sebastian Review, Broad! (a gentleperson's magazine), Persephone's Daughters, and Cease, Cows. Her piece "Singed" was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2015.