There are too many apples to pick and not enough time to save them all, so sometimes the fruit rots and falls with a thud and squish onto the earth. Cloying sweetness turns sour as flies hover. The apples we pluck from the branches are green, and they don’t taste like those shiny, waxed red things piled high in the grocery store. They crunch hard and tart and pucker your lips tight. There’s cyanide in the apple seeds, but it won’t hurt you, no, it won’t hurt you, but I’m careful and spit them out anyways. Grandpa’s vegetable garden sits close by, and a slice of kohlrabi tastes like the soft turned soil next to raspberry bushes, earthy and wormy and warm. Thick leafy greens hide squashes, and sometimes small apples roll over to the edge of the garden where dirt meets grass and, if you look close enough, small bugs crawl over green blades to blend in with thick clumps of brown. Grandpa kicks the rotted apples into the compost pile, and their scent mixes with coffee grounds and vegetable peels, but the flies still hover. Inside, Grandma carefully peels the ripe apples, green skin against sharp knife, too close to flesh but never drawing blood, deft fingers and the sound of apple skin hitting stainless steel and sometimes falling onto yellowed linoleum. When I climb the apple tree, my hands scrape into calluses that carry me farther than I’ve ever been, until the branches are too thin and I still can’t see over the top. Maybe I can reach the apples up here, save them before it’s too late. Be careful, don’t fall. Sometimes a spider lurks between the leaves, but I turn my head and pretend not to see it because up here I can be brave.
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Emma Williams is an M.F.A. student at Eastern Washington University in Spokane, Washington. She enjoys drinking tea, playing with her kitten, and failing at baking projects. Her work has appeared in The Eunoia Review.