During 2009, when I was frequently traveling between Pittsburgh and New York City, I lapsed in the management of my refrigerated produce. After one lemon sat, sliced, uncovered, in the back of my apartment's old fridge for 3 months (or maybe more) I saw that it wasn't decaying in a way I was familiar with. I'm no expert on decay, no forensic anthropologist, and this was something new to me. I let it stay there until I moved out in January of 2010. I brought the lemon, and its counterpart, the lime, with me in a little bag of detritus and tucked them away in a little storage box in my little closet.
A year later when I had finally unpacked everything, the lemon and lime, so often associated with freshness, were anything but.
But this citrus and its citric acid, so associated with preservation, were doing everything they were meant to.