Written by Ella McCarthy
Illustration by Hengjia Liu
This piece was originally published in ‘Vestige’, Bossy’s 2023 print edition.
An ode to Wendy Cope
I wanted to share an orange with you.
We’ve already snacked on mandarins.
But the Wendy Cope context,
I felt,
Was oh so necessary.
You sat with me, as I insisted.
We read poetry first,
And patiently waited for me to find them,
Those tenderly crafted words.
One, then another, and then a third.
All aloud to you and the room around us.
Yet, I felt like there was one rhyme missing.
And still you sat, and watched, and waited.
Orange on the countertop …
Anticipation.
I couldn’t find it,
So, we read Wendy Cope again.
Then I cut the orange,
And we shared it.
Sweetly.
The last line echoes between us,
And it strikes me that maybe the other poem,
Maybe it never existed.
Sitting there with our citrus stained smiles
It seems to me that we are in fact
Writing it now,
Together.