Content Warning: mental health, death

Vikki C. – The Persimmon Tree

It is that age of speculation, everyone is writing about the end, and between us,

we admit we were not one single war, but many disquiets. My daughter paints a watercolour of Oriental persimmons and I hear my grandmother's voice cautioning us that eating too many of the sweet tropical fruit can make you sick for days, as if anyone were ever tempted to leave that way.

Overconsuming the taste of your heartland before moving on to this continent and that – makes the homesickness, the "missing you" worse. Also eating unripe ones can cause internal damage and trauma, like sending young men to war before their time.

Remembering why our forefathers left, we could frame this painting of beautiful, gleaming orange-red fruit, hang it by each bed we lie in from England to America - maybe call it "temptation" or "saudade" – or just "still life".

You would, except you also remember how the fruit leaves a bright red stain on everything it touches, and generations later, somehow you don't feel quite as homesick. Still, in this broken world of therapy, pills and hard-to-swallow news, some philosophers would say such sweetness is not a bad way to go.

Vikki C., author of 'The Art Of Glass Houses' (Alien Buddha Press), is a British-born writer, poet and musician from London whose literary works are informed by existentialism, science, metaphysics and the human condition. Her writing is published in Ellipsis Zine, Black Bough Poetry, Acropolis Journal, Loft Books, Across The Margin, Literary Revelations, DarkWinter Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. Vikki has also worked and lived in cities across Asia and attributes her artistic perspectives to these cross-cultural experiences. Find her on Twitter at @VWC_Writes

Artwork: Land (e)scape by Giuseppina Brandi

Giuseppina Brandi lives in Naples, Italy. She has a Master's Degree in Comparative Literatures, with a dissertation on European Poetry of WWI. With a great passion for poetry too, she believes in the power of art and poetry of healing and connect. Autodidact, she has always loved drawing and painting and she takes inspiration from natural world and human emotions.