The Orange Effect

A friend of mine wrote to me about a writing exercise they did with oranges and this is how the humble fruit stimulated their imagination...
_____________________________

Cold from the open-air stall, the fruit was firm in the palm of my hand, the stalk sat between my fingers, thumb rested in the depression at the base. Ornamental leaves hang flaccid and waxy, a ball of waxy pumice asking to be bowled in swinging, graceful over-arm. A pinch of skin fountains fragrant, pithy spray.

The peel tears with a dull-dry crackle and luxurious scented oil glistens on my nail. A soft silkworm lining caresses and encourages the thumb to plough ever deeper around relenting flesh.

Powdery coolness rests on the tongue tastes bitter arsenic until a bite through jelly flesh floods the mouth with sweet, watery nectar.
_____________________________

The skin felt unsatisfyingly thin, the orange was small, wizened and in all honesty, suspect. Attempting to peel it with newly trimmed nails was as useful as using putty to break the surface. With nowhere to gain purchase the skin broke away in eventual scraps and patches of orange paper. This was taking too long, how can it be worth it? I tore out a geriatric segment in frustration, it separating with a rasping, paper tear.
_____________________________

He had bought the orange from the old Nepalese grocer, a guy in an old deer-hunter hat to shield against the cold, face weather in soft, translucent crevasses. Snow spiralled down from the mountain that loomed above the ramshackle, wooden hut town at it’s base. His daughter was sick in the hospital again so he had secretly, against a staunch secular belief, decided to take an offering to the prayer wheels in the monastery at the shoulder of the pass.

It was dusk now as he set out, boots sloshing in the gravely, chocolate malt mush, where pure snow was swallowed instantly by the dirt of the town. It was a relief to start the ascent and leave the human clamour behind. The orange was sticky in his hand, so he dug from his quilted overcoat an old plastic bag to put it in, holding it with his hand thrust in his pocket, the bag twisting in the wind against his leg.