three oranges (the fruit).

My grandmother chose her death

Surrounded by all of us in an echoed room,

No longer full of machines and static beeps

Almost peaceful if not for the breathless grief slowly turning through the air

And while everyone else spent time in mint green hallways

Grinding teeth and calling priests

I sat at her feet and watched her sleep

Watched her chest come up for air, stubborn

And when she opened her eyes for the last time

I was the one

Who saw her move so slowly

Imperceptibly, almost

And pull her ruby ring from her finger

Crater carved in her skin over sixty three years of impossible fondness

And two of being one cleaved half

When she drew my warm hands to hers

She held them for a moment

And wrapped my fingers around that ring

A final, conspiratorial

Secret, without words

The way she used to give me small peppermint chocolates

When my mother looked the other way

It was a silent gift and a smile on pale lips

And I am the only one

Who remembers ruby red, warm and alive

And not the wash of those green walls,

The sour smell of hospital-clean coating and clouding

Every last memory of theirs

But not mine.

*

When I first landed

In a city with signs I couldn’t read

And tones my tongue didn’t fit around

And McDonald’s that served noodles

The dirty grey-blue of the sea stretched until the horizon

Fading into the darkening evening sky

A rolling barrel wave I couldn’t understand

A blackening navy panic

Isolation is insistent and constant even when it’s small

Blank stares thick through the smoke of street snacks

Missing traffic cues and a blossom of horns

Weekends of walks alone tasting silence

In the crashing of the world’s loudest city

It was six weeks before a first, warm win

The smallest victory, steady, needed

Ten at night

Hot like midday

A fruit market dripping in neon light

Surprise oasis in this awful harsh place

For the first time, I was spoken to

What do you want?

And in this sea of almost-overripe fruit

I understood the question

And I froze, surprised,

Because I also knew the answer:

Three oranges, please

And instead of a scoff or turning away with a murmur

He smiled at me, gently

Put three heavy oranges into a small brown bag that almost split open

Under their weight

And I walked home feeling lighter and sweeter

Chest unfurled

It was only months later

That I realised the word for the colour

And the fruit

Were different

And I'd used the wrong one,

Had been using the wrong one for months

As the creeping cold turned breath visible

In the warmth of the shop

And he had just nodded and understood

Every single time

I never bought fruit anywhere else, not even once

And when I moved away, his children clung to my leg

And gave me an orange for the flight.

*

In the end, love was the biggest, deepest, most hollow

Because all cliches are true

Except for the colour, which was purple in the end

After so many other colours flashed bright

A silence so deep I didn’t know was possible

A trembling, resigned fear

Of never hearing that racking laugh and razor tongue again

The only thing worse than what would always happen

Always

In saying nothing

So the no wasn’t ever even conscious

It just was

Because I couldn’t find the words before someone else did

Even though they were endless, endless, endless

Like their new happiness

Round our friends’ tables

That made me breathless

And when the deep purpling bruise first burst alive

The second after I’ve met someone

It spread everywhere

Ugly, constricting

A tightness impossible to crawl out of

Unending, and the deepest colour I ever felt

But after swallowing all of me up

Into that purpled blackness,

Staining everything almost beyond repair

It washed out

And there is a small yellow centre left in its wake

Like the stone in a peach

That grows and starts to push back

Remembering the things that are light,

And happy, and brave, and the things

That feel like hot sunshine in winter

And all of a sudden

The purple is lilac

And then it is gone,

Just enough yellow to start again.

*

So maybe that’s why they call it the colour wheel

The quiet possibility of all ugly greens, blues, purples

Blooming to hot red, orange, yellow

For those people who can steer it to a gentle turn

Or be still long enough

To let it swing round on its axle

With a breath of hope.

Even when flooded by cool,

I have always chosen warm colours.