I always thought of red apples as rather large hearts.
They grew in my back yard, dark and beating.
They were as big as baseballs
with bronze flecks tattooed onto their skin.
The apples would dangle off of slate grey branches,
taunting my small hands as I reached for a taste.
Once in hand, I would always twist off its stem,
detaching the thing that so faithfully clung it
to its wooden home.

I always felt wicked when I ate one;
like I was eating pulsating veins instead of
juice the color of amber.
I cut through its flesh greedily until the
golden blood dripped around my lips.

The core was always my favorite part,
armor for the rigid seeds
I thought the seeds would be fine on their own,
they were indissoluble,
unlike the tooth-torn skin before them.

I knew they craved to go back.
To be back inside the earth and grow and thrive
and become what it grew off of.
So I dug into the welcoming soil
until my fingertips were blackened.
I let the seeds fall into the lukewarm dirt;
returning the remains of the heart back
to its mother’s embrace.