Belarusian
I climb the aluminium drabina. Every step rypić. Adzin, dva, try … At the very top, I hold on to the tiniest halina on the tree. The bright hot orange among zialony leaves blinds me. I reach for it. Halinka bounce back, but I’ve got it. I touch thick šurpaty skin. I smell the apple from my grandmother’s orchard. Green, yellowish, čyrvony jabłyk. Smooth, hard, a Pleiades of freckles.
I listen: a thirty-year-old crunch.
I taste: the sugary juice running to my elbow.
I hear the missing rodny voice:
— Volečka, idzi małaka papi!
I climb down the handmade wooden drabina and run to chata to drink the warm małako.
Because my babula has just milked the cow whose name I can’t remember.
Hear Volha read:
A time to gather oranges together
More about this story, and the anthology Te Moana o Reo | Ocean of Languages, featuring more than 40 languages of Aotearoa, can be found at The Cuba Press, here.
Volha Kastsiuk lives in Northland and writes in Belarusian, Russian and English. She holds a degree in Russian Philology from Belarus State University. In 2021 Volha completed two courses at the Creative Writing School (Russia). Her work has appeared in anthologies and online in Belarus, Austria, USA, Finland, Kazakhstan and Russia.