When there is time,
I eat oranges in winter before they are too sweet, not in summer. I drink the juice. Oranges, I eat from the waist down, under cover, disguised as a basket weaver or itinerant shoe salesman in need of some vitamin C. I drink the juices. If there are too many, I cut them in half and glue them to the ceiling and walls to create a dizzying texture, before I drink the juices, cold, from the fridge, shaken, shaken, not in a strained silence.
I sip, no, I gulp it down without respect. It numbs my brain even more than normal, finished in one.
I cannot cook. I juggle with oranges and walk around the kitchen table while the baby sleeps. Only two in my hands at any one time, the rest, say three, no, two, ok, only one more, in the air. I do some cooking, but its not great.
The oranges are always in a bag. White plastic or green mesh which I can easily rip. I like ripping the mesh, I can get my fingers into it, but I would never rip the bag, it might come in useful. Three bucks a kilo, clementines in a dusty lay-by, tangerines stacked casually under trees. Oranges for desert or oranges for juicing, juice me now.
I consume oranges for my health and breadth, for the colour and for the shape, always a joy, heavy in my hand. Peeling an orange is a pleasure in itself, don’t give me easy peelers, let it be a skill, make them tricky peelers. Lifting the supple pieces of peel with a sharp. Orange, then white, carefully away from the prize. Working your way down to the sub layers of protective pith and nonsense. Then lifting to appreciate, ripping the segments, so closely matched, apart, one by one, around the globe. I always expect my hands to stay clear, but they always end up rich with juice. My penknife is stained.
When it is done then, I am without so much. A spoon, a grinding wheel, a charging point, a washer, a fat padlock, three blind, three hungry, three down and one to go. Water runs downhill, if the slope is insufficient it will walk, if it is almost flat it will meander and if the slope goes the other way, water will go uphill, back the way it came.
The next day, in deference, I put the oranges back onto the tree, screwing them into position carefully, to each appropriate twig with a delicate fixing, worthy, I hope, of evolution.
I put the olives back in the jar and fill it to the brim with salty water. I put the steaks back on the cows and unbreak the eggs. I unsew the clothes and put the iron back in the ground. Now I may rest and undream.
The next day I put the rain back up in the clouds and send the sunlight on its eight-minute journey back to the sun. I send the rivers up into the mountains and shuffle the waves back off the shore. I think that I am becoming younger, its hard to tell. Now I may rest and unmake the bed.
The next day I forget how to read and have trouble standing up, everything is confusing, and I keep dropping my food on the floor. So, I unwrite the books, uninvent the wheel and the steam engine in that order. I forget the number zero and count poorly, cutting a tally stick. My laptop has become a lump of plastic, and my car is a doorstop, electricity makes my hair stand on end and the internet is only useful for catching fish. I am exhausted, I shall rest before I put on my night gown.
The next day I go contactless, and money disappears, the television only shows adverts, so I turn it off and it evaporates, the children are distraught until I teach them to play poker. The motorways fill with weeds as high as a dog and the high rises are dripping with ivy. On one corner they sell rock drawings and woven goods.
Without, all is undone.
The Guardians of the Cave 