by Jen Feroze

Paul has overheard that it’s my birthday.
He brings us breakfast on the verandah,
dewy and humid. At the centre of my plate
is a passionfruit, big as a tennis ball
and split open. It’s like
looking into two dark gold ponds,
clogged with frogspawn that snaps
between the teeth.

He’s made doughy pancakes too, sticky
with berries and honey. As your fingers
make lazy circles on my thigh under the table,
Paul is calling to his sunbirds.
Pipettes of sugar syrup for the littlest ones.
His whistling polished by decades
of mornings like this.
Thin brown arms steady, chin lifted
and song carrying over the fruit trees and ferns;
hot rain and bird calls
and the electric hiss of mosquitoes.
We are so far away from our lives.

Jen Feroze is a UK poet living by the sea. Her work has appeared in journals including Magma, Under the Radar, Butcher’s Dog, Chestnut Review, Okay Donkey, One Art, Stanchion, Poetry Wales, Berlin Lit and Black Iris. She won the 2024 Poetry Business International Book and Pamphlet Competition and placed second in the 2022/2023 Magma Editors’ Prize. Jen has edited anthologies for Black Bough Poetry and The Mum Poem Press, and her pamphlet Tiny Bright Thorns was published by Nine Pens.