The Lemon That Wanted to Become the Sun

In a lemon grove near the sea grew Limo, a yellow and shiny lemon.

Every morning he watched the sun rise above the trees and sighed.

“I wish I were him.”

The sun lit everything: the sea, the houses, the roads, the leaves. Everyone waited for him. Everyone greeted him.

Limo, instead, hung from a branch.

“I am only a lemon.”

The leaves tried to comfort him.

“You are fragrant.”

“That is not enough.”

“You are bright.”

“But I do not light the world.”

One night Limo decided to become the sun. He held all his yellow inside himself. He strained, swelled, became very hot.

A firefly passed by and said, “Are you all right?”

“I am becoming the sun.”

“You look like a lemon with a stomach ache.”

Limo was offended.

By the next day, the heat had made him tired. His peel was less shiny. A little girl named Ada entered the lemon grove with her grandmother.

“This lemon looks sad,” she said.

Limo would have liked to hide among the leaves.

Grandmother picked him gently.

“Perhaps he wanted to be something he is not.”

Ada smelled him.

“But he smells wonderful.”

In the kitchen, Grandmother cut Limo in half. He was afraid of disappearing. Instead something new happened: his fragrance filled the room. Ada squeezed a few drops into a jug of cool water. She drank it after running and smiled.

“It tastes like sun.”

Limo, inside the jug, was amazed.

He had not become the sun. But he had carried a taste of sun into the water.

Grandmother used a little peel for a cake. Another bit to perfume her hands. The seeds were placed in the earth.

“Do you see?” said a leaf from the windowsill. “Your light is not in shining from above. It is in bringing fragrance close by.”

Limo understood.

He could not warm the sea or wake the village. But he could make water fresh, a cake cheerful, hands clean, a seed new.

A few weeks later, a little plant sprouted from the earth. It was small, with two green leaves.

Ada greeted it every morning.

Limo had not become the sun.

He had become a lemon completely.

And that, he discovered, was enough to bring light.