Apple

My dad used to eat the entire apple: core, seeds and all.
He’d chuck the stem—the only sign of it ever having been there.
If the seeds contained cyanide, it was of no consequence—
A tiny poison within a fruit of life was a metal heirloom etched with flowers—
An image of a thing that dies on an everlasting object.
He ate pears the same way—in their entirety—
Not to be smudged with sloppy, clumsy fingers,
Nor soiled with stickiness.
With a plum, he would suck the stone—
yearning to exact every last drop from the crevices,
polishing it to a shine.
Had he been Adam, he would have beaten Eve to the apple,
Not sit passively as a dining servant, observing and patient for table scraps.

I have inherited this passion. At birth, I signed my name to the document;
Nourished in youth to spell in his elementary ways; nurtured as a messenger of his words.
For a bond of family is as strong as steel—
Made of Earth metal and made to last.
Like a blood-sister bond, his bloodprint remains upon my thumb,
And will remain after that life that I celebrate is gone.

I celebrate life fully—engulfing it as a whole fruit—
Allowing it to flow unfettered to my core and return to its source.
Like a cavern, I will be carved by the ebb and flow of the currents of experience
Until I am egg-shell thin,
Buoyant,
And carried along to the foot of the broken cross—
To lay dirtied and disregarded—
Humbled and fulfilled.

The copyright of this post belongs to Monica Jenkins