The Orchard Path
Victoria Addis
I was told
to walk the orchard path like I wasn’t holding
anything sharp.
(But I was.)
The nettles knew.
They touched my ankles like
Yes, girl, we sting too.
The sky did its usual
passive aggressive thing—
you know, that
vast polite greyness. Like it
wasn’t going to rain but it could.
And it might.
The apple trees had bent
from too many years of being picked
at. They said nothing.
I listened hard to their silence.
It was like a woman being interrupted.
Somewhere a foxglove
was blooming too fast.
It didn’t ask permission,
and that was the point.
Nobody talks about hellebore.
Or how it kills
quietly.
(I think about hellebore more than I should.)
I was not angry.
I was just—
collected. Like rosehips after frost.
There is a kind of anger that curdles
into patience.
Which is worse.
(Ask the hawthorn.)
A crow watched me
the way a priest watches
a confession stall—
like he knew something and
was waiting for me
to admit it.
I won’t.
Instead I’ll press
my rage into jam jars
and label them plum, sloe, blackcurrant.
No one needs to know
what’s really in there.
But when they open it—
they’ll taste it.
VICTORIA ADDIS is a poet, writer and teacher living and working in the East Midlands region of the UK.