Diorama of Lemonade Moon

The dollhouse broke beneath the bruise of noon.
Somebody painted curtains on the walls
yellow strokes, still wet after a decade.
They stuck to my breath as I inhaled them,
swallowed the chalky sting of citrus dusk.
The moon hung low above the glass orchard,
I sat in the crater of a child’s room,
where nothing could rot, and so nothing could live.
The mattress was imprinted with the shape 
of a little girl who had slept too still 
for too long. Her teeth were folded into 
a velvet envelope, mailed nowhere, sealed 
with strawberry glue. Each dresser had a throat,
they whispered when I opened them. 
A pitcher was nailed to the table with
lemon rinds peeled and scarred eternally.
The moon was never made of sugar.
I learned that in the sixth hour, when the
sky starts to churn like an empty stomach.
While the ants came in rows to steal the rest—
a leg, a knob, a lemon, the hinges from 
doors I wasn't planning to walk into. The girl 
returned on the tenth night or her twin did. 
She had a screen for a face. It played 
only one scene, her pouring lemonade
into her own open mouth, while her body 
smoked from the inside. I tried to scream, but 
my tongue was a little curled lemon 
slice pressed to the rim of an untouched cup.
The moon grew brighter as if it too were 
watching a show it couldn’t look away from.

Ⓒ Written by Dereka M. Smith 2025

Thank you for reading this piece of my soul. If you would like to read more of my essays and poetry, subscribe down below or visit my website here. You can find me on Instagram as well @dsmithwrites.