Ballooning

By Emma Moran

I ask, can I touch him?  His fingers curl around my thumb.  The skin of his palm is taut, convex, like a blister.  All afternoon, nurses whisper: trapped air, subcutaneous, new one on me.  I feel bad for being the one who noticed.

It grows.  Becomes a grape, a satsuma, then something immeasurable, colonising the space inside him.  Stealing ground from his flesh, his sinew.

One morning, I stand by his cot with a pin.  He is bulbous, bulging.

‘No!’ screams Mama.  ‘He might…’  So I don’t.

The next day, he floats out the window and shrinks into the sky.

Tending Leaves

By Sharon Pinner

They had done names, talked about the weather and ordered starters and mains. 

“What do you do for a living?” he asked, eager to fill a short silence.

“Well,” she began, “Sometimes I plant seeds. I tend leaves and help them broaden.”

“Gardener?” 

She shook her head and continued.

“I show people new places. Or offer an escape.”

“Travel agent?” 

“In a way but not exactly,” she said. “I help grow thought. Grow knowledge.” 

A pause. 

“Teacher?”

The waiter arrived with their drinks. She waited until they were alone again before answering, “I run a bookshop.”

Bloom

By Nicki Blake

The parched earth soaks dark as he hoses it. He looks up: scanning the landscape where the expanse of foliage begins; spotting a hint of orange - a hint that will soon flower into an intense red. 

‘Dad!’

His son comes running around the corner of the house.

‘We gotta go! My truck’s out front.’

‘But I’m hosing the perimeter like I always do –‘

‘Not for this one, Dad. C’mon!’

As they speed away, he looks back. Behind his house, the entire forest canopy is a blazing orange blooming into red as the widening firefront races towards them.

The Growing Room 

By Julie Staines

The white-gowned figure waves at a wall-mounted keypad.  

An electrical whirr, lights flicker on.  

Mechanical humming fills the air.  

The Growing Room.  

‘Our incubators’, he intones proudly, ‘each filled with a perfectly-formed baby girl’. I had seen their sisters, indeed they are all siblings, listlessly playing in the garden.  Unsmiling, unseeing, seemingly oblivious to the surrounding shady trees and fragrant flowers. Little golden-haired clones.  

A blue eye briefly winks open, then closes again.  

‘In our nursery, we specialise in beauty and physical excellence’ 

He glances round haughtily, ‘but not too much intelligence, that’s not a requirement’.

Garden Ramble

By Deryn Pittar

Wax-eyes flit, sit and hang upside-down on the birdfeeder, feasting on a ripe kiwifruit. The gardenia, finally free of scale, holds its glossy leaves to the sky. Its flowers scent its sheltered corner and perfume the house. Along the west wall, blessed by irrigation, the beans form small groups of goodness. The lettuces have bolted in the past week, beating our appetites with their vigour. The grapes, shielded from the wind, lean back against the fence, loving the reflected heat from the stones beneath, promising a vintage crop.

 Some apples have codling moth. Even the bugs are growing.

A life of Growing

By Helen Dudley

When we’re young we’re always growing.

Aunts and Uncles oft bestowing

Words on how their minds we’re blowing,

At the rate of growth we’re showing.

In our twenties, lines we’re toe-ing,

Like rivers to our outlets flowing,

Not really knowing where we’re going,

But all the time our seeds we’re sowing.

In thirties/forties, to-ing fro-ing,

Life’s treadmill belt is never slowing

Our children now are doing the growing

But in our chests our hearts are glowing.

In our fifties age is showing.

The Pace of life finally slowing.

Eventually our souls we’re knowing,

Allowing the age of really growing.

Seeded

By Fhi Love

‘There’s new life out there, and in here,’ you say, ever so gently patting your stomach like mothers do.

Outside the cracked glass it’s raining. Periodically, a shard crashes to the sodden ground—the frame of the greenhouse rotten and held together by new moss—splicing pea shoots and tiny marigolds enveloped in brown pots packed with moist dirt. 

‘We are all guided by Mother Earth, ‘you say, spearing the freshly-picked lettuce on your rustic, earthen plate with a water-marked fork. I pass the salt—then pepper—you dust your crops and smile.

Lemon Tree

By Sally Tate

The lemon tree won't obey my fussy cuts,

it grows its own way, into green,

from fragile skin to woody bone,

no lemons gleam in leafy dark,

but vengeful thorns so sharp,

they’ll scar me into winter,

all or nothing, my lemon tree,

one summer’s rush of recipes,

cakes and curds, 

sunlight preserved in brimming jars,

then, alone, one bitter husk,

a stubborn thing, my lemon tree,

won’t rise like milky fig,

nor twist like olive into pearls

that whisper to the bees,

so I harshly slice,

this wilful, wretched tree,

but inside the gnarly heart,

sprouts wild, ferocious, free.