Hawaii Pacific Review

by Kristen N. Arnett

The cousins gathered acorns beneath the wide canopy of oak trees, filling up the pockets of their shirts and pants until they bulged open. Though there were hundreds carpeting the ground behind their grandparents’ house, they kept only the unblemished ones, tossing out any that were punctured or hollow. They pried off the acorn’s caps and rubbed their thumbs across the smooth surfaces. Sometimes they broke them open and poked at the swollen orange kernels, imagining what it would be like to eat them. The kids did this every summer, and their parents had done it before them. The grandparents had owned the house for over thirty years. It sat in the middle of a large suburban neighborhood, but before the other houses had sprouted up, there’d been orange groves bordered by patchy dirt roads and fields full of wild grasses. Continue reading →