Watermelon

watermelon betterIt was the summer California was drying up and burning down and we all talked about sparing water and sparing air. Lawns turned to hay and cars remained grit-coated. Bob and I sat in our underwear on the wooden steps of our third-floor city flat hoping for a breeze, eating watermelon. It was the summer Bob told me he was going back to the woman he had known before me. We were sixty-three. He said it wasn’t too late. Global warming had done it. We sat side by side, silent in the stagnant night. The watermelon was sweet and icy.

 

Jackie Davis Martin’s recent stories appeared in Flashquake, Enhance, Counterexample Poetics, Fractured West, and Bluestem, and are upcoming in several anthologies. She teaches at City College of San Francisco.

 

Photo credit: Kita Kitts

 

 

2 Responses to “Watermelon”

  1. Melina says:

    So much information expressed in each well chosen word!

  2. Joy Manné says:

    Succinct, and as dense and layered as a novel

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