My favourite fruit is orange. what is on your mind,

In our home, freshly pressed orange juice was reserved for adults. And I already at a young age always wanted what I could not have. I caught Malaria for the first and only time, after nine years of living in Mombasa. It was raining season and the mosquitos had been fucking in the ponds that were puddles, on the first day and muddy rivers on the last days. I could not keep anything down and all I wanted was oranges. Since I was sick, my dad bought me two Del Monte packs of orange juice and four round oranges. They were the brightest of orange. I ate one orange and threw the flesh up an hour later, I watched the colourless carpels swim like sea wasps in a bowl. My body had consumed the juice vesicles. I sat there waiting for the rest to run out of my mouth…but nothing.

My body had taken what it needed.

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The flying termites came in swarms, we closed our windows and pulled the green screen down. Waiting for the virgins to scratch off their wings -wings that took months to grow. They shed their wings so quickly you can’t see them rid themselves of it, all we see is their glass wings scattered on the grass. “For years perhaps she has lived in subterranean darkness, in preparation for this one moment (Marias, 1937).”

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Frank said that he perceived the color orange the first summer he fell in love.

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My bags and pockets are filled with forgotten orange peels. They may be all dried up. Sometimes when I find them again I break off a piece of dried up rind and it’s zest bursts a fragrance of nostalgia in the air, as I am reminded of the fruit that I swallowed.

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Navel oranges are the juiciest. When we had nowhere to go in L.A we found shelter in a sushi joint. Rolled ourselves cosy and made plans to come back, under caviar skies our hands peeling the clothes off our backs.

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You said things but thought other things. Aaron cried “Tell it like it is”, to be honest, all I want is to eat you. Instead you ask me what I am doing right now. We speak but never really connect, your calling has licked the juice, fat, and life out of us just as the children of the queen mother do when she can no longer fulfil her purpose. I wrap myself in thick skin and continue to float upstream. At the bottom of my skin there lies a scar from all the times I almost let myself be peeled to sink.

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I am an adult now and oranges are rotting in my fruit bowl, but all I want now is Sunny? Where is my Sunny? This can not be it.