Florida Oranges

I don’t believe a tattoo needs to be meaningful

in any way, but I’m getting one of an orange

next month. It’ll be my Florida tattoo, I say. A piece of home

that can sit above my knee. When I was ten,

the orange trees around us started to die from disease. Springs

spent with the car windows down, sweet, citrusy orange blossoms

blooming in our noses, disappeared in a season.

Here, a flourishing staple of our state’s natural beauty.

There, a housing development and a dollar store

and the trilling beep of construction equipment.

Yet, even as the orange trees are replaced with orange hats and vests,

I can hold the memory of the fruit on my body now

like the way I was marked by them as a child, picking

spheres too big for my growing hands from the low branches

in my great-grandparents’ yard. As I plunged my arms into the tangle

they sliced through my skin like gigi’s knife

in her kitchen cutting us neat, dripping slices we sucked with wide grins.

I want to remember what my wild Florida smelled like,

how the wind felt as we drove through

country back roads and it whipped my shiny

golden hair around my eyes. The light passed

through the strands and looked like branches blowing

in the wind if I squinted. I don’t want to have to close my eyes

to find Florida’s beauty, anymore.

Emily Rose Miller (they/she) holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Central Florida. She currently serves as a reader for ONLY POEMS and has had the honor of attending the summer 2024 Kenyon Writers Workshop. Find them online at emilyrosemiller.com, on Instagram @emily.rose.miller, or in real life in Orlando, Florida cuddling with their cats.