Apples

Quiet here today, nothing but the inner-churning and a wooden bowl filled with red apples. It seems it would be almost impossible to eat all these apples before the baby arrives. Still, I try, cleaning them on my thigh, throwing them in my bag before I leave. All morning, I have been thinking about getting lost--not the kind of lost I was in my 20's where I'd find myself crying on subway platforms or kneeling in bookstores trying to find a place to pray, but physically lost--the kind of lost where you really don't know where you are, the kind of lost where perhaps only an apple could save you. When we were little, my brother always seemed to know shortcuts, through Startown or through the woods or just across this little stream. I would have followed him anywhere. And I did. Even then, he carried a pocketknife. Now I like to remember him using that knife to peel and split sweet apples for us, but really I think we just carved words into trees and sliced at things that we no longer wanted whole.