Emilio Herrera @emiliush

contrary to popular belief, i do occasionally do things other than work, go to the gym, and wait for melbourne weather to justify the beach. sometimes i write. this is Lemon Meringue Pie — the first poem i’ve put out from a much larger work about memory, queer coming-of-self, chosen family, and the stories we tell other people and ourselves to make it through to the next payday. also: if you work in editing, publishing, books, literary agencies, or anything adjacent — in melbourne or elsewhere — come say hi. i’m trying to figure out what happens after the manuscript exists, which is apparently a whole separate nightmare. if you’re interested you can check out my substack for more :) — • Lemon Meringue Pie At Le Loir dans la Théière you corrected my French gently, tilting the vowels until the name settled properly in my mouth. You wore a woollen beige sweater. We ordered lemon meringue pie, and shared a single glass of wine. The café was quiet enough to hear a hairpin drop. Between spoonfuls of meringue in the dim January light I made you laugh. And so I took three photographs of you across the table. I thought they would keep you. But later someone else’s jealousy and my own uncertainty passed through my phone like a storm. The pictures vanished. So did the messages— from equinox to solstice, our clumsy tenderness archived and erased. I was twenty-three then. You stayed twenty-two. What I didn’t know was you would return to me in other forms. The first time was a year later— September 2019, a crowded birthday party. Someone speaking in the kitchen, Spanish from Buenos Aires falling into the room your cadence uncanny. For a moment the air disappeared. The second time was the summer of 2021 in my mother’s house— my brother walking past me wearing the cologne you used to wear, and suddenly you were everywhere. The third time was the only one I chose. Years later I began writing a story. I went looking for you in the corner of my memory where the photographs used to be. And slowly the table in Paris returned— and you’re sitting in front of me, when I was still the one, the lemon meringue pie, twenty-two; your beige sweater in the dim light. Patiently teaching me how to say things correctly as if language, like love, could keep a moment from disappearing. Then the glass shattered on the white cloth; everybody moved on. But I’m still twenty three inside the memory with you sitting in front of me.