1st: Blood Orange

Pimpleness of the skin with notes of floral and vetiver. I am puncturing open the world with one thumb. A velcro-static. Maroon blood marks, assured specks of slaughter.

The kitchen is all wood panelling like an 80's cruise liner. I am fifteen. My sister wears the same deer print dress with Peter Pan collar, sash ribbon at the waist, but we are not twins. Her eyes half moon when she laughs.

Tell me the taste, mum says, and I give the pulp my teeth, both of my hands in a Communion cup. Red does a run down my wrists, oils at the sides of my smile.

I cannot speak. It is all three perfumes: Samsara, a reimagining of myself, a sense of Royalty. It is Cerruti 1881 and so shy of history, of dates, always swathed in mohair in a triptych of peach. It is CK's Obsession, ferocious pythons of musk matching my mouthiness.

On the bite, I taste subterranean. The wasteground and concrete tubes. It is him and I inside them and the whoosh of echoes with my underwear pushed high up at the top, dragged down at the bottom, wry blue air on skin not seen, and me a human envelope. There are stones of pain as I am opening.

Come on, Tiger, we're waiting, what does it taste of, she says again.

I pray for words. Behold and for once (!) Christ listens. I tell her: it tastes of letterboxes and the boysenberries at Mold, and your best conserve, and those golden bits on the church organ.