ORANGE

My nail cuts through the peel, sends a burstof oily mist through the sun splayed overmy aisle seat. The droplets movein tandem, refracting the light,and with the mist come bright citrus notesthat rapidly disperse into the olfactory systemsof surrounding passengers, interrupting their thoughts,stirring awake the man in front of mewho hours ago told his seatmate He shivers, rubs his eyes. We speed into a knotof clouds and before we’reChipped ice sweating onto napkins mappedwith the country. An already-completedcrossword in the seatback. A gameI play with myself is to see how longI can keep the peel as a single coil, its carpetedunderside, its surface pocked like a teenage face.Each tear releases more droplets I admirefor how they seem to assemble and swell,a plume that breaks apart with a kindof intention, a mission, how I imagine chemicalsto operate in a medical context, dispatched into systemsof cells, trained to obliterate, defend, convert.Depending on the light, some reach an almostamber tone while others bleach to yellowas if administered different dyeslike the slides of deformed cellsI studied three nights agowhile googling the specifics of my father’sleukemia, a browser window openedonto paragraphs describing howit’s most common among California migrant workersand those exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam.And yet my father stayed out of the war.Another page showed photos of drum barrelsstacked in rows, each one painted witha stripe of orange from which the Agentgets its name. There’s also an AgentPink, Purple, Green, Blue, White, calledRainbow Herbicides. Because nothingis too benign to be excluded from tactical use.I see maps of dioxin productioninclude a plant in Newark, New Jerseywhere a few miles inland my father as a boystood at his front door and watchedhis father waking up hungover in the front seatof his Ford where he passed out againafter a night at the VFW, a memoryinherited so long ago I can’t rememberwhen he told me, or if he even did,and yet it matures in shapes and textures,the color of the car, the dewed grass shining,high broken ceiling and easterly windsblowing over from Newark. My fathershivering in the passenger seat.Extreme nausea and aches, fatigue and lowspirits. I hand the peel to the flight attendant.Gray flaps of wing metal rise and adjust,a slight shift of the plane’s axis.My tray table is in the locked and uprightposition. My seatbelt is low and tightacross my lap. I look down once moreat the mountainous dirt I call home,then return to my book about the assassination.