We stand in the apple orchard, my father and I, grasping reality like its flesh is between our fingers, or perhaps it is only the apple meat. He tosses me a smile and I curve one back: we are experts in this field, pitching dimples like ideations of happiness, maybe. Mother used to try to rouge my cheeks and line my eyes, sanctify the crazy that comes from creation, but I turned out mad anyways.
There is an apple in each of our hands, now, and he dares me with one pitched eyebrow to take a bite. I have never been much good at obeying commands; they roll from me like water, like love, but his sticks like an apple slice clings to the core. We are well-versed in the art of solitude, my father and I, silence interrupted only by the crunch of molded mouth on sibylline fruit, but even that is not strange when the world is wonderful; such has my father decreed, such has he given, & to me & I wonder and I ask what green stains this flesh, Father, is it inchworms crawling on down Red Delicious Lane or streams running sewer-poisoned beneath smog-flavored sky, and he says it’s nothing, immaturity just, oh isn’t he a jester! Fingers curving around sound like he can pull it out of the air – my mother’s lipstick was poison apple red, did you know, did he know when he kissed her that his lips would be stained so? He preferred blood red to envy green but maybe this green stems from the core, jealousy undulating into apple seeds – perhaps the cyanide has leached into the flesh and poisoned mine.
If my father is a pillar, I am a puppet. If he is a rock, I am an ant. If he is a tree, I am a worm – or perhaps Ladon, guarding that stupid stupid golden fruit till it all rots to saccharine sour because my mother was right! Ideas are poison! And lip-kissed by beauty all he can think is yes until I beg no.
My father is a stable man. It is not easy to sway him.
Annabelle Chen is a teen writer from Massachusetts. She has been recognized by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers and the John Locke Institute. In her free time, you can usually find her researching cookie recipes or reading Latin poetry.