all i ever wanted, too dumb to surrender
January 12, 2009
conversation with an apple.
“How could I have stayed this way?
I wanted to grow for you, and shelter you.
To be anything but a seed.
So bite my skin, kill my potential
Grow taller, and become a tree.”
I’m no tree.
A Bonsai at best.
I am unfinished;
With a spotty trunk,
Scarred from the prunings,
My leaves are thin.
I tap on the apple.
Talk to it in Morse code.
Just beneath its flesh,
A brain in two halves
Wrapped around pituitary seeds.
Tossed down from a tree that didn’t need
This apple’s wisdom, and dreams;
As it has those all on its own.
That’s why trees send apples
Out in to the world.
In hopes that they will
Take root and grow.
And not become leathery midgets.
Yellow-brown husks.
Empty skulls.
The apple whispers its story
As I press my face closer:
“I have never smelled an orchard,
But tell me that they are full
Of things that smell
The way that you do.”
I apologize to the apple in Braille:
“I cannot bite and kill you.
I’ll hold you, and let you rot.
Make you into cider in my basement.
I’ll wait a season, and then I will
Drink deep of your wisdom,
Forget my thirst in your dreams.
I’ll be you and you’ll be me.
And neither of us will be…
Trees.”
