Apple and Rain (27 page)

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Authors: Sarah Crossan

BOOK: Apple and Rain

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I glance at my poem. Could I risk sharing it? Do I have the courage?

I raise my hand and everyone stares at me for the second time that day.

‘Apple? You want to read your work to the group?’ Mr Gaydon asks.

‘Yes,’ I say.

‘And is what you’ve written true?’

‘Well . . .’ All eyes cling to me. ‘Emily Dickinson is a poet and in one of her poems she says that when you tell the truth, you tell it slanted. So it’s true. But it’s not in-your-face true,’ I say. ‘Is that OK?’

Mr Gaydon looks like a proud parent – or what I imagine a proud parent would look like.

‘Please read it,’ he says, and I do.

‘“These I Have Loved” by Apple Apostolopoulou,

‘
These I have loved:

Pork with apple sauce; tea in a heavy mug;

The smell of new books, and musty ones;

A girl with red coils for curls

– Her scream – Her smile;

The slap of a blonde dog’s tongue

Against my face; and an old face – Nana’s;

A broken fence – a secret pathway between two houses;

The sinking into a familiar bed,

Sheets white and crispy clean;

The return of a woman in a green coat –

Imperfect and human; The sound of poetry;

And of pencil lead scuffing the page as I write;

Made-up stories; and Truth.

These I have loved.
’

The classroom is so silent I can hear the wall clock ticking.
Tick-tock, tick-tock
. For what feels like a full minute. I breathe through my nose, and Del holds my hand.

‘Bloody hell. You got good at writing poems while you were away,’ Jim Joyce says loudly. He doesn’t follow this up with a joke. He just gazes at me. And so does everyone else.

‘Thanks, Jim,’ I say.

Mr Gaydon raises his arms. ‘It’s like I told you all: poetry is transforming,’ he says. ‘Right, Apple?’

‘Yep,’ I say, and slip the poem between the pages of my special grey exercise book.

I have been transformed.

Acknowledgements

Special gratitude is due to Julia Churchill, Ele Fountain, Emma Bradshaw, Helen Vick and Ani Luca. Thank you also to everyone in the teams at Bloomsbury, RepForce Ireland and Combined Media.

Finally, thank you and much love to my family and friends for their continued patience and support.

Sarah Crossan
grew up in Dublin and London, where she spent most of her time writing poems and stories and making her own books. When she got a bit older she studied philosophy, literature and creative writing at university. Her first published novel,
The Weight of Water
, has won lots of awards and was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal. Sarah worked as a rather overexcited English teacher for many years but has given that up to focus on words, green tea and biscuit dunking. She now lives in Hertfordshire, England, with her family.

Bloomsbury Publishing, London, New Delhi, New York and Sydney

First published in Great Britain in August 2014 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

This electronic edition published in August 2014 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

www.bloomsbury.com

Bloomsbury is a registered trademark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

Extracts taken from
Opened Ground
© Estate of Seamus Heaney

and reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd

The publishers are grateful for permission to adapt ‘Stevie

Scared’ from
The House That Caught a Cold
, first published

by Puffin Books, © Richard Edwards 1991