Fruit

I remember Decembers of wild strawberries and love letters
sipping lemonade and spit with all the bad boys on the swing sets.
We stole cigarettes from our grandparents and handed them out like scriptures
sunlight burning up our scalps, the smell of chlorine and cremation.

Always heated agitation. Eating oranges in the garden.
Cut hydrangeas in the bedroom where everything goes to die.
But we kept some pulpit and draped ourselves like garlands
around our fathers and our lord preaching prophets and watching porn.

And it’s always in the summer when I remember that red telephone
and how we use to wilt when strange boys whispered where to meet
getting drunk at the elementary school and lying in the street, the concrete
warm and always breathing, the taste of apples and dark asphalt.

Tayi Tibble

Tayi Tibble is a Wellington based poet of Maori descent (Te Whānau-ā-Apanui/Ngāti Porou). She has previously been published in Starling and Mana Magazine.