ORANGE
by ANNE BOKMA
I am an orange solid in your hands
heavy as a heart
you toss me from one palm to the other and back again then roll
me
across the kitchen table loosening the dimpled skin that protects
the secret inside
you push your thumb into the navel and feel the fleshiness under
the surface
the coat falls away unfurling and curling in one continuous
fragrant peel
you tear the tender membrane fastening each segment
see how easily they separate and surrender
each wedge remains intact an almost perfect half-moon
tucked inside a translucent pouch of skin
you bite down and it’s all pulp and pith
hundreds of tiny vessels burst from the force of your teeth
you pop me into your mouth bit by succulent bit
taste the sweetness your fingers sticky with zest
your tongue isolates a single slippery pit
flicks it this way and that
til there’s a blaze of glorious orange
then a settling like a hot sun sighing into the horizon
everything has disappeared into your mouth
except the bitter rind
fruit that’s left hanging rots from the inside
I was ripe for the picking
Anne Bokma is an award-winning freelance journalist, public speaker and storyteller whose memoir, My Year of Living Spiritually: One Woman’s Secular Search for a More Soulful Life, is forthcoming this fall from Douglas & McIntyre. Anne is the founder of Hamilton’s popular 6-Minute Memoir “speed storytelling for a cause” event, which features writers sharing tales on a common theme in six minutes or less and raises money for local charities. For more information go to www.annebokma.com [Photograph by Lucy Mahoney.].
HA&L magazine 