A Is For Apple

Attempted Courtship.

In Australia, I got to see the bowerbirds nest. The males built these amazing structures, decorating them with brightly coloured bits to try to attract a mate. Of course, most of what they use now is garbage, or what we’d think of as garbage, bits of plastic and string, snack wrappers and yarn. I imagine these little birds spotting what we toss aside, swooping down to claim a bottle cap, holding it tenderly in beak and tucking it in beside a shard of broken plastic. I imagine the bird thinks its nest is perfect, even though it is made of literal garbage.

When the nest is ready, the lady bird comes and casts a beady eye across it. If she likes it, she’ll move in. They’ll ruffle one another’s feathers, have some eggs, raise a family. If she deems it inferior she’ll destroy it, rip it to shreds. Screech at the male “do better next time asshole, can’t you see all you’ve given me is a pile of trash?”

He’ll be confused as she flies away, certain he’d presented her with the very best. Certain he is a treasure.

Animals.

According to local activists, there’s a pet store in a mall nearby that’s been mostly unmanned for the duration of this lockdown. Someone goes in and feeds the fish and lizards, the turtles and snakes the hamsters and gerbils, once a day, and leaves again.

Picture it, all that life in boxes, breathing in the dark.

Activists.

I say, sometimes, that right now parenthood is my act of protest. Raising a girl child who complains loudly when her needs are not met, who tells her father to hire only women at his new company, who tells people that she, with her brown skin and blue eyes, is rare and beautiful.

But the truth is, I can’t bear the frontlines right now. Can’t bear the noise it. My cracked heart can’t bear the weight of all the sadness so I claim love as a political act and hide behind it to heal.

Apple.

If I peel it very carefully, so no skin is left, and split it into very uneven chunks, never wedges, not slices, I can convince my daughter she is eating something called a “winter fruit,” instead of an apple. Ever since we watched snow shite she tells me “nothing good comes from women eating apples.”

She doesn’t even know about Eve, yet.

Anger.

I could draw you a map and show you where it lives, locked behind my sternum, like something I could dig out if I were made of dirt instead of skin and bone.

I wonder what would happen if I let it germinate. If it blossomed into something ugly beautiful. A Venus flytrap, a firework that burns men’s eyes.

I could let it grow, maybe, and see what happens when only it’s roots belong to me. Birds could roost in its branches. Animals could pluck ripe fruit in spring.

I could lie down, for a while, and rest against its trunk, look down at the dappled shadows of its leaves. And up, at the sky above.

(Written with the wonderful Maya Stein, using inspiration from the poem “Next in Line” by Josh Lefkowitz and the letter A.)