by Emily Nonko
97 words
We sat barefoot on thick grass as you ate your apple whole. I asked, can you do that? and you didn’t answer and I, well I only watched as you bit carefully to the core, chewed one, two, three, swallow: teeth abrupt as piano keys. You considered the apple skeleton before biting hard into its heart - eating seeds, innards, stem, leaving nothing to prove it ever existed. And I tried this eight days later and two hundred twenty-five miles away from you. I ate an apple whole, and I, well I felt no different than before.
Emily Nonko grew up in
