Lemons by Ryan Norman

We are moving and the world is air. The air is light in a yellow room. A white room

containing yellow objects. A dresser with topaz earrings and a table with a basket of

lemons. Roses. We are this room and we sit in it together. We look at each other and

the colour moves within us. The windows are large and everything is coming through

them and yet nothing is necessary for this room contains all there was and will be, I

think, I thought, the man and woman in the room do not know that beneath their

colour is a basement, a dusty crawl space, a speckled tomb in which nothing waits or

grows, but they are not there yet, they are in the room and holding each other, and

the wax of the fruit is breaking, and the water is pulsing in the flowers, and the world

is opening to a tomorrow that never comes

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Ryan Norman is a poet from Beverley. His debut pamphlet, Tonight I Want to Live and, was published in 2024 by Broken Sleep. Other work has appeared in bath magg, The Rialto and elsewhere. He lives and works in London.