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The earth here tastes of salt and iron, but the lemon tree doesn’t care. It flowers anyway—white stars against a bruised sky. My father planted it the year I was born, twisting its roots into the same rocky soil where his own father had planted olives. Now the grove is a patchwork: some trees singed at the edges from shells that fell last winter, others heavy with fruit no one dares to harvest after curfew.
Salma says the lemons remember. She’s seventeen, two years older than me, and she braids shrapnel-scarred branches into crowns for the younger children. “Suck the rind,” she whispers, handing me a half-ripe fruit. “Let it burn. That’s how you know you’re still here.” As Long As The Lemon Trees Grow
Because as long as the lemon trees grow—crooked, unyielding, bursting with acid gold—there is a tomorrow. There is a table to set. There is a fruit so sour it makes you pucker, makes your eyes water, makes you feel the raw, impossible fact of being alive. The earth here tastes of salt and iron,
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