by Jean-Luke Swanepoel

What about the plants? The bougainvillea, the aloe, and the orange tree, which—sincere efforts notwithstanding—never yielded any fruit. They were all in pots—cerulean, puce—because we no longer had a yard, having scaled down from the house with three bedrooms and a lawn whose hollows we could not manage to fill. Not with laughter, or with tears except my own, and not for a lack of trying. It was a house which—as my mother-in-law liked to proclaim—simply longed to be a home, and we failed to deliver. Where some couples watched their children grow, we—you know, that couple—came to content ourselves with watching oranges ripen on a fucking patio. Some parents dreamed of futures for the fruit of their loins, and we—the non-parents—dreamed of slicing and devouring the fruit of our labor. Every spring the tree blossomed and delicate fruit began to form, but by the time the first chill descended, all had been aborted. Until this year, of all years, when fruit formed and clung, and I picked still-green oranges, just to spite my husband. I packed my bags and shut the garden gate behind me, certain that the plants I’d watered so carefully every week would all be dead in a month. Bananas could be picked green, but perhaps oranges remained bitter, never ripening, until turned to rot by Penicillium digitatum. We—I will see.

Jean-Luke Swanepoel was born in South Africa, and he currently lives in California with his husband. His work has appeared in Lunch Ticket, CutBank, and Hawaiʻi Pacific Review, among others. His sophomore novel, The Book of David, was published in January 2025. Find him on Goodreads at www.goodreads.com/jlswanepoel.