The apple scent throws me back to my childhood

picking apples from the family tree

in a grandparent’s garden with a sister.

Her up the ladder; me, holding it steady.

 

My gaze follows the upward flow

of her arched white socks as she balances,

straining to reach higher.

I see straight up her skirt, up to her cotton-white

knickers and the smooth dark creases they conceal.

This peek stirs something unfamiliar inside,

something that carries on through my awakening sexual years.

 

From that moment I noticed things:

the blonde down on Donna Foster’s arm, year six;

the flash of Lisa Harrison’s flesh-coloured

bra in high school as she raised a hand in class;

watching the women’s tennis on TV,

a tease of white with each serve;

walking in on my mother in the bath, embarrassment,

her black triangle of wavy hair in the water;

the pornographic magazine found in a bin by a bus stop,

its multitude of flesh, pinks and reds.

 

I think of the first time I masturbated, secretly,

in my sister’s wardrobe, when all feeling was lost in my legs;

of being side by side in the cinema with Hannah,

clumsy hands, hot and sweaty, finding their way

through  pubic fuzz to delicate membrane,

her small cold hands leading me to discovery;

my first time behind bushes in a garden with Suzanne,

tight, wet and quickly over.

 

These memories keep the scent of insignificance at the door.