Hildegard, Tarkovsky, Citrus Trees

I began growing kumquat trees after my German hairdresser—who fixes BMWs and fills his salon with large, flapping plants—pulled a pale fruit off one of his containers’ branches and told me to keep it in my pocket for three days to ripen. I wrapped the kumquat, the size of my thumb pad, into a Kleenex to be transported in my winter coat. It was a new year. I drove back to a house built in the 1700s—owned by a woman in her nineties who worked full-time and kept a fridge filled with Celsius energy drinks—where I was living in the attic. The pocket kumquat, forgotten until I unpacked from the holidays, tasted like a flower.