A poetry collection that is a journey which includes coming to terms with sexual violence and loss, with celebrating love and connection, and bearing witness to the world that shaped that journey.
With Difficult Fruit however, I found the poems to be affecting and easy to connect with and understand. The poems deal with growing up and loss, how someone feels when burying a friend or dealing with an assault on their body and mind. The poems in the collection are short, often no more than a page long and they are written in different styles. Some with one long stanza, while others are broken up in parts. However, with Difficult Fruit I found myself stopping to consider the meaning of a lot of the poems as while they were short, they were impactful.
Trigger warnings for controlling behaviour, emotional abuse, gaslighting, sexual assault and rape. Amelie loved Reese. And she thought he loved her. Because if she works out what went wrong, perhaps she can finally learn to get over him. You should not ignore tears. Told our tummies are misfiring, like wayward fireworks.
Where did you get that from? You are overreacting. You are crazy. You are insecure. You are being a silly little thing. And, then, days or weeks or even years later, we look back on The Bad Thing that happened to us because we ignored all the signs, and we say to ourselves I wish I had listened to my gut. I think they both sum up the difficulties people, but perhaps girls especially when so often the media and society wants to mould them into a certain way, have when trying to figure out their own emotions.
There are scenes of Amelie going to a counsellor which were very well-written and important as it shows how there are people out there to help and no one should feel lesser for needing help.
