A still evening with a poetry collection about growing up hard

For the evening when the house is put right, the kettle is warm, and a heavy memory from growing up has come to sit with you. This is a short debut poetry collection about pain that began early and about the slow work of accepting yourself, with one small, ordinary image of sharing an orange to hold onto through it.

save me an orange is the debut poetry collection by Hayley Grace, a 114 page paperback in English published on March 12, 2024, with the author’s own name listed as publisher. The setup comes straight from the description: the poems go to the roots of struggle and pain in growing up, and to the love and the pursuit of self acceptance that were part of the author’s own choice to live. That last point carries the weight of the book, and it is worth knowing before you open it.

The description presents the verses as a narrative, deeply personal yet meant to reach beyond one life. Two things sit side by side in it: the shadows of the past, and short moments of joy. The pairing is what the collection is built on, so a reader should expect both. The joy is kept small on purpose. The title image is an orange shared between friends, and the line quoted in the description makes it a kind of instruction: when nothing seems left, life still hands you something to split with a friend, who may also have believed at sixteen that the world was ending. The approach, as far as the description shows, is to stay with hard material and set ordinary kindness next to it.

This is a book for a reader who carries the memory of a difficult youth, her own or that of someone she loves. It may suit someone who has come through a hard stretch and wants words that are plain, or someone who wants a small book to give a friend. Because the subject includes the author’s choice to live, it asks for some steadiness. A reader in a fragile season may want company nearby, or may decide to wait. That is a matter of timing and taste, and a description cannot settle it.

At 114 pages, it is a short paperback, and poems move at their own pace. The material given does not say how many poems there are or how they are arranged, so those details stay open. A sensible way in is one quiet sitting, or a few poems at a time over several evenings, with a pause when something lands heavily. The edition is a standalone paperback, easy to keep on a shelf or a bedside table. Nothing about it suggests a book to hurry through.

What stays is the orange itself: a small, plain thing that can be divided and handed across a table. For anyone who has stood in the place these poems come from, the book seems to offer company and a quiet reminder that sharing something small can matter.