Juice

Juice

All through Tuesday the air smelled like one big orange slice

as if l could dip my fingers in the bedroom wall
and bring them back coated in syrup.

I could eat all the oranges I wanted:
I was twenty-one and home for the summer
and my dad ·was dead and love was oranges
and the dark red post-box
rusting on the corner of the street

and I was pregnant by mistake.

It was like I was sick and oranges were the cure.
Oranges and women’s magazines with names like
Time for a Break and Chat that had spa day giveaways

next to headlines like Drugged and Raped
by Jack the Ripper’s Ghost! and Married to my Mother!

and My Amazing Sex … with a Wall!

that I could skim while I pressed my thumb nail
into another orange globe. I didn’t even need to look up

to make a hole big enough to suck out all the juice.

I could just put my mouth to the rind and keep going
until there was nothing left inside.

‘Juice’ won First Prize in the 2019 Newcastle Poetry Competition.