Sarah Hilton (she/they) is a lesbian librarian, or… a lesbrarian! Her work has been featured in several print and online journals including Minola, untethered, and CV2. She is the author of Saltwater Lacuna (Anstruther Press) and the digital chapbook homecoming (MODEL Press). They live in Toronto, where they work as a children’s librarian.
“I wrote ‘Holding You, Too’ as an anniversary gift to my partner, inspired by an inside joke that started between us after I had shown her Wendy Cope’s poem ‘The Orange’ (2002). At the time, I was back in therapy, during a period which my roommate referred to as my “survival mode” — living on my own for the first time, trying to make rent, getting a better look at myself. I remember coming across Cope’s poem on Twitter and feeling nostalgic for the speaker’s unwavering gratitude for life. There’s a stillness in ‘The Orange’ that I was yearning for deeply. I no longer had time for activities that brought me joy. In fact, my new life seemed to be void of it entirely. My partner was one of the many people who saw me through this period and reminded me that love, like the stillness in Cope’s poem, will only come if I actively seek it out. This is a process I wanted to capture in my poem — to take pause, to look around, to fall in love.”
Texting you “The Orange” by Wendy Cope
in the peak of summer with the intention of refreshing
your mouth. Telling you this poem reminds me of you
and never explaining my mind. Lately everything has
been coming alive whether it asked to be or not.
Lately everything smells like your body. This poem.
The words on the page. The hum of cicadas.
The laughter. The way gratitude splays out
on the tongue like the taste of citrus. A sharpness that wants
to be known. The next hour you write back, and you see
something else. We are holding each other like the orange slices.
We’re growing into each other in the rind. And I can’t help
but laugh at your daydreaming way of thinking.
And I can’t help but dissolve at the implication.
The way the skin will separate itself from the orange
over time. The slices remaining and holding fast against age.
The sharing. The clinging together until consumption.
The surrender to the knowledge that eventually,
we will be two handfuls of the same body. I can’t help that
the summer exists for us to make meaning out of everything.
One minute, I’m feeding my body and the next, the flowers
are blooming in the hopes that you’ll play with their lips.
The moon makes an appearance in search of your body,
making its own music. The heat, swelling with humidity,
reaches out to hold you close. Craving. Coveting. In the evening,
I go out for groceries and embrace the heat. I’m licking my sweat
and laughing. Thinking about how we are sharing a story,
sharing a life. Somewhere, the same heat is holding you, too. I take note.
I will buy you oranges through the winter.
