Spanish Lesson with Grapefruit, by Kathleen Shull

Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Rose, by Francisco Zurbaran (Spain) 1633

Spanish Lesson with Grapefruit
​
In a tiny Madrileño café 
my Zaragozan instructor conjugated 
subjunctive verbs as the crunch 
of my puffy croissant lathered in melting
butter and layered with glistening 
grapefruit marmalade 
crumbled down to the white plate. 
Sticky fingers stopped me from turning
the lesson page as I sipped 
strong coffee from a large round bowl rather than a cup. 
Yo coma 
Tu comas 
Ella / el / Usted coma 
Nosotras / Nosotros comamos 
Verb endings change like the direction of fractions 
When inverted, confusing 
and tumbling my thoughts 
back to the focus of the crunch of the croissant 
the ingestion of the tingling intensity of grapefruit tartness 
the lemony aroma, it closes my eyes.
The grapefruit juices transformed into reflective, glass-like substance.
Hearing the white plates clattering behind the counter 
as the waitress organizes her miniature station, I open
my eyes to the reflections tilting off the Spanish book
from the invading morning sunlight through a picture 
window with views of a narrow, uneven cobble-stoned 
street; its gray stones shine half in sun 
splash and half lay in the opposite building’s shadow. 
Vosotras / vosotros comáis 
Ellas / Ellos / Ustedes coman 
My instructor recited the chart 
I hear the inflections, the soft Spanish conversations 
at other tables, the giggles and complaints uttered  
in a sound and pictorial collage. 
Still the present perfect conjugation is to speak of unlikely 
or uncertain events in the past or to cast an opinion, 
often emotional, about an event or moment in the past. 
I ate or comiera is the subjunctive imperfect but I 
wish I were in the subjunctive present, yo coma, I eat 
and the grapefruit marmelada puckers the insides of my mouth.
It was the essence of grapefruit and its memory
persists like the madeleine Proust’s aunt Leonie tasted
after dipping its crumb into the lime-flower 
infused tea on a Sunday morning. 

Kathleen Shull

Kathleen Shull teaches AP Literature and Composition, AP Seminar Capstone at the largest Native American High School in the United States, Chinle High School on the Navajo Nation. Formerly a journalist, she also taught American English to Germans for 16 years in Saarbruecken, Muelheim an der Ruhr and Berlin. She is also a certified German, journalism, and history teacher. Last summer, she went to Jordan on a Fulbright-Hays cultural exchange to Amman, Petra, Madaba, Aqaba, the Wadi Rum, Jerash, Irbid and Umm Qais where she learned about the Ghazal poetry tradition in Arabic which she now teaches to her students. She studied Spanish in Guanajuato, Mexico and Madrid, Spain. When not learning languages, reading, or hiking, she spends most of her leisure time learning about art or visiting museums.