Staying Drunk - Anne Wright

I make good pie. This time I was making and apple pie with the tart green apples from my little overgrown yard. I had trouble getting to the tree because of all the weeds and brambles out there, but I could see at the top, some beautiful apples glistening in the morning sun. I pulled the ladder through the shrubs, damning the gardener I’d fired last fall. It was his job to keep all this growth at bay.

In the kitchen I washed the apples and piled them on the counter. It used to be that peeling the apples was the part I hated. But I learned to slow down, stay drunk with the loveliness of the way the peel came off the apples, in a long ribbon of green flesh cascading, spiraling as I cut it away from the juicy ivory sphere.

Next I sliced the fruit. Most of the pieces landed on the cutting board, but a few fell onto the floor. I left them down there until I’d finished cutting them all, and putting them into a big yellow bowl. When I bent down to pick up the fallen slices I saw two, turning brown around the edges, that had landed together, that had overlapped in the shape of a heart.