in the wrong line

Eating Apples

Every time I eat an apple, I think
of my Uncle Buck eating apples,
or rather I think of my mom
telling me how he ate them,
my quiet uncle who loved horses
and who cracked open
the fresh wounds of our hearts
when the cancer claimed him
so soon after it claimed his brother,
my father. I might have seen it—
Uncle Buck eating lunch
in the shop office, air conditioner hissing,
the smell of oil and gas
laced with sweet apple
as he ate skin and flesh,
his eyes closed as he pushed on,
down and around and down,
biting through the green crunch of core
and the hard black seeds
until all that remained
was a slim brown crook of stem,
a comma that once linked fruit to tree.


— Carrie Green
originally published in Salvation South