Today I Peeled An Orange All In One Go
A poem from a quirky local cafe in Istanbul
I finally did it.
Peeled an orange all in one go. It only took me 24 years, and when it happened, it happened by accident really. Almost like the orange was ready to shed its skin.
It was, I think.
So now, peeled orange in hand, I can settle in to enjoy the fruits of my labour. Ha!
I’m sitting on the top floor of an open-door cafe, which is now spilling soft jazz music onto the streets of Istanbul.
A beautiful Tuesday just past noon.
I say “cafe” — It’s a Starbucks, really. But that’s less fitting of the creative vision, and makes me a hypocrite for all the times I’ve preached to others about shopping local.
I have a single headphone in, playing something alternative that mixes strangely, but not unpleasantly, with the cafe jazz.
The other headphone stopped working yesterday.
And maybe that’s how it goes.
A headphone stops working but you get to peel an orange all in one go.
Or your wife leaves you, but you get off scot free from the parking ticket you should have been written last week.
I mean, I don’t have a wife.
Or a car.
But the moral of the story still stands, I think.
Oh, and shop local.
Alexandra Walker-Jones — April, 2024
