by
Ellora Sutton
Walking through his mother’s lemon orchard
kaleidoscopic with yellow
I said,
‘what a strange fruit to choose
for all of your acres
(or your mother’s acres)’
although it was beautiful
fecund, fertile
and all the green that swamped
trees unruly
like ampersands
or fissures
or the way my body writhes when I laugh too hard
we do not live in a citric climate
and why not apples
or pears
or something you can pluck
and rub on your shirt
and crunch,
right there
but he just looked at me
and I learnt patience
perched on the elbow
of a lemon tree
just looked at me
the drought of lemon juice,
waxy skin and pith gumming teeth
mouth reef-knot shut
grimacing abrasion
just looked at me
as I waited
I breathed
that clean-hand smell
or that feeling of endless summer
or yellow as far as the eye can see
teenage years like in the movies
citrus tears fogged
him just looking at me,
as I realized
I would never be this young again.
By the gate was a fig bush.
He plucked one down for me
and called it convenience
but all I could see
were those cancerous
with wasps.
Ellora Sutton,21, is a recent Journalism and Creative Writing graduate from the tiny village of Kingsely in Hampshire, UK. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Eye Flash Poetry Journal, Constellate Magazine, Young Poets Network, Blue Marble Review, and Paperfox Lit Mag, as well as being commended in the 2018 Winchester Poetry Prize. She currently works in a museum gift shop, where she is in a prime position to force her favourite books on the public.
