| Apples
by Allison Glacey
---There
were apples all over the ground.
Some looked perfect, ripe and clean.
Others clearly fell days ago, rotting
and sweet, attracting yellow jackets
to burrow in, tunneling through their
food until they’d eaten entirely
to the other side of the fruit. The
sound of their buzzing filled the air
with sluggish, low sound. At least it
was noise beyond the thick silence that
lay between them in the fall sunshine.
She nudged one of the rotten apples
with her foot, rolling it slightly to
see if any insects were inside.
---“Don’t
do that.” his exasperated tone made her
meet his gaze for the first time in minutes.
She rolled her eyes upwards and held there,
her chin following the trajectory and pause.
Not breathing, she watched the green waving
leaves, bright, unaware of the heaviness in
human hearts, smiling even, if leaves can smile;
everything she wasn’t at this moment.
A big sigh. Her eyes returned downward, not
stopping to look at him again. His gaze left
her only then. Both of them staring down among
the apples. A yellow jacket had made its way
out of the apple she continued to roll under
her foot. She jerked away, her shoulders drawn
closer together, her back no longer slumped.
The yellow jacket was heavy with feeding and
made a meager attempt at flying away, yet landed
instead on an adjacent, bruised red and yellow
skin. It began boring in for more, antennae
fluttering across the surface of the apple.
Something in these movements reminded them both
of the searching of a blind man’s cane,
though neither one of them knew they shared
this perceptual simile.
---She sucked her
bottom lip and chewed on it, as she was apt
to do. In the bedroom it was a thing of sultry
beauty, but out here, in the midst of their
frustration and anger, it scared him a little.
It signaled her basic ease with snap decisions,
unpredictability. The uncertainty. He half reached
out towards her to grasp one of her hands. She
kept them plunged in the pockets of her favorite
corduroys, right hip angled sharply towards
him. He wasn’t sure if it was a gesture
of defiant defense from his physicality or an
invitation for him to wrap arms around her waist,
a starting point to reconnect their bodies.
His open hand, waist high, upturned and tender,
was still in the autumn air between them. Hanging
for a beat, now two, three. It dropped.
---She nudged the
same brown, softening, tunneled-through apple.
Nothing more came out. She pulled her foot away
and kicked the ground. With a speed and violence
that startled her as always, he lunged forward
to simultaneously smash the apple underfoot
and take one long step to her. He could see
down the hill, that the others were already
coming up and for a few seconds, they disappeared
in the dip between hillocks. The apple trunk
was old, gnarled and wide and all that stood
between them and the others, for one more moment.
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