O Eve

All day I've been thinking of apples--not the waxy kind in the supermarket bins but the little ruddy crab apples that littered our neighbor's yard. They were sour and mal-formed, and if you took the dare, not just to bite it but to swallow it, you were sure to end up moaning and groaning. I sometimes wonder if life would have been different had it been a real apple tree, say, Golden Delicious or Granny Apple, Pink Lady or Red Rome. Imagine getting the dare to bite and feeling the juice run down your chin; imagine a whole yard of gnawed-to-the-cores and sweet-smelling goodness; imagine wanting pie and already having that which will fill it.