Orange
It smells like autumn.
Like decaying leaves,
Rain,
Damp soil,
Ants,
And Fungi.
It tastes like mandarines and oranges,
slices of fruit,
sitting on a plate
on the sidelines of an oval.
waiting,
for sweaty,
muddy,
joyful and tired youngsters,
to run over and gobble up the fresh tangy and sweet segments,
juice dribbling down chins,
hungry after a long and tiring footy training.
It smells like fire.
Like burning roaring flames,
charcoled logs,
ashes floating upwards and away,
sparks of embers flying.
It looks like an Icthus sunset,
fading yellow sun in a saturated haze of orange, pink, and lavender,
setting over Lake Victoria and the Banksia Peninsula.
Friends and family gathered,
strumming guitars,
voices joined in harmony,
children splashing about in shallow water,
unsuspecting dangers of mussles and barnacles lurking between rocks,
awaiting the soft flesh of a naked foot.
Lonely girl,
yet not alone,
sitting on the sandy hill,
trying yet failing to perfectly capture the last golden rays
of sunlight,
reflecting onto the calm blue water.
It feels like warmth.
Like love and beauty and fire and tight tight hugs from people long gone,
the tightness fading as the memory fades and they slowly dissapear.
Like death and destruction and grief and fire.
Like the sorrow clinging onto that lonely girl,
years after she died.
Like one could write about for years,
and still not write enough.
Still not all could be said,
Because she lived half a lifetime.
But the more lonely girl writes,
the more time passes,
and the more time since she died,
and the more the memories fade,
and the more the sorrow latches on,
and the more she shrinks in on herself,
and yet the more she writes.
It sounds like the scritch-scratching of her pencil on the paper,
of black swans and pelicans soaring across the sky,
silhouetted by that goddess sun,
sinking beow the trees on the horizon,
shrinking out of sight as lonely girl brushes the last smidge of tangerine across the thick watercolour parchment.
Of whistles blowing,
kids calling for the ball,
and the thundering footsteps of the herd of them bellowing across the green.
Of the roaring flames of bonfires,
both inside lonely girl's heart, and outside,
in front of her,
friends and family gathering to roast marshmallows and cook damper,
rejoicing in loving company and reuniting at last.
Of dried autumn leaves crunching underfoot,
agile ones racing downstream in the turbulant currents of the gutter,
and decayed ones sloshing about in the mud.
Of Orange.
