for Emily

i found an orange. it sprouted one morning, round, formed, out of my left index finger. when i plucked it the leaves were yawning. for weeks i racked my brain. weeks, and i didn’t know what to make of this orange that hovered on the edge of my sleep, refused to leave the furry gaps between my teeth then snuck up my nostrils to the bottom of my spleen

that wasn’t half of it. more of them started to pop up; on an uneven trestle table, befriending a gallon of wine in a neighbour’s garden, slapping the centre of a palm, brushing with impossible poise the ice-flecked grass. in glass jars and savers jackets with snapped twigs in the pockets, in kisses and lips that quiver like strings, sealed and singing, living in skin

the orange just kept it pretty simple. sitting on my dresser it amplified the silence,
counting the days in its crinkles. one arvo though i was getting sad, standing on the platform with my faded woolworths bag. when i came home everything was covered in dusk. i went straight to the orange and it was bashed up, rough, punctured with two holes

inside one ran a maze of its own contorted rind. the other was decorated with webs of dust and black mould. but it just sat there, still, so unapologetically orange and tranquil. and that’s how it was when a cloud encroached the room, when music scratched in the walls and poems passed out on the floor. the weeks congealed and oranges continued to loom

on some loose cobblestones, half-submerged in a thin puddle that glittered and ran the length of a lonely alley. amongst billows of mist that collapsed into their middles then opened outwards, rising, entwining over the tired night sea. when the dash lights were dead on a dark empty street, with the old lady on the bus who took a month to get from the door to her seat and years of unbroken drizzle gathering in roof gutters

one night i walked in and saw just the soft carcass of the orange and a few drops of juice oozing down the dresser’s side. as i stared at the scene, a voice moved with my jaw:
the orange is sometimes questioning the orange, giving it your full attention, watching it blossom and thaw. the orange is remembering there’s no it or you, just one, and waking up to give it new. even though you sometimes feel old and i remembered the gardener who planted an orange tree in the earth of my soul