\nMost would come into my home only in the summer, when my crooked hands held untold bounty of cherries and apricots and peaches, ripe and dripping with succor, and they would pull at the fruits as if they weren\u2019t parts of my body, as if each pluck didn\u2019t send fire down my nerves. They would stand there and take bites, big sloppy bites, laughing and talking, juice leaking down their hands and chins, and they would reach out and smear the red and orange and yellow liquid with bits of my flesh on the faces of others. There would be laughter and joy, and I would remind myself that every time they carried the stone with them there would be more of me somewhere else, and that, someday, the more of me might meet the flesh of the one I had lost so long ago, the one whom I still crave.\n<\/p>\n
\nI can feel them again, laughing and kissing and rolling around in the grass, among my bark-covered arms, and every giggle and every sigh reminds me of what I used to be, ages ago, of why I live the way I do, destined to offer and wait and seek and move only by creating multitudes of myself, spreading far and wide, in the hope that somehow, somewhere, there would be peace, or an end, or a point to it all.\n<\/p>\n
\n
\nNobody remembers my name, but everyone remembers Johnny Appleseed. When I knew him he was just Johnny, a barefoot kid with crooked teeth and freckles, while I was just a girl with ginger braids, who got in trouble for getting dirty while hunting frogs and climbing trees.\n<\/p>\n
\nGrowing up, the two of us hung out in orchard crowns, him stealing old man Wilkerson\u2019s apples, me gorging on cherries and apricots and peaches. We often fled one of Wilkerson\u2019s large, mean sons, who chased us with a shotgun, yelling and cursing.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThey know it\u2019s you because your shirt is always stained,\u201d said Johnny one day, as we hid in a wild blueberry bush off the road, a Wilkerson running past us.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cSo? Yours is, too.\u201d I suddenly felt filthy and small, and would\u2019ve given anything to have the cherry-red fruit chunks magically disappear from my white-and-blue checkered shirt.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cApples don\u2019t stain.\u201d He nodded toward my shirt. \u201cNot like your stupid drippy stone fruits with all the color.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cYour apples are stupid!\u201d I jumped to my feet. \u201cJust like you, Johnny Chapman!\u201d I marched away with my chin up, hands balled into fists. My face was on fire.\n<\/p>\n
\nThat night, Johnny threw rocks at my window until I showed up.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cStop it! You\u2019ll break it,\u201d I said, groggy and annoyed. \u201cWhat do you want?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI wanted to say I\u2019m sorry. I was mean. And cherries aren\u2019t stupid.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWell, I still think apples are. Good night.\u201d I shut the window with indignation, but, as my head hit the pillow, I was smiling.\n<\/p>\n
\n
\nAfter that night, we spent more time in each other\u2019s trees, tasting each other\u2019s fruits, getting the bits and pieces and all the juices mixed up\u2026 Until my belly started to swell and it was my father holding the shotgun, chasing Johnny away.\n<\/p>\n
\nI never left the house, and I remember pain, so much pain, blood everywhere, the screams, and I remember hearing that the child was stillborn, and I remember the sweetness and the joy and the texture and the fear, and I remember wondering where Johnny was, and if he knew, and if he\u2019d have liked the baby to be called Apple or Cherry or Peaches, and I didn\u2019t even know if it was a boy or a girl, and I remember, oh so clearly remember, the feeling of that very last breath leaving my body\u2026\n<\/p>\n
\nThen I awoke, and had many more arms and many more hands, and I could feel the dirt and the air, and I could see the sun through the many, so many eyes, and I rejoiced at the rain, but felt confused, until I realized they had buried me in the orchard, for as much shame as I had brought upon the family, they knew who I was and what I liked, and they wanted me to rest where I was happiest\u2026\n<\/p>\n
\nOnly I missed them all and I missed Johnny, but most of all I missed my baby, and I felt devastated because I did not know where they had buried it.\n<\/p>\n
\nBut I will find them both, my Johnny, my baby. Every time I bear fruit, when the juicy flesh gives others joy and they carry the stone seed with them, when they drop it in the grass and a new part of me grows, I get to see more and feel more and learn more, and I have known countless deaths amid my roots, but none of them are my child, and I have known countless loves amid my trees, but none of them Johnny and me, and I have touched and intertwined with countless roots of apple trees, but they were all mute, none of them were Johnny, and I keep searching, keep spreading, because I cannot fathom that I would be living on, all these winters and summers, seasons of barren branches and those so heavy with fruits they almost break, but that he would not, that he was only ever just a man, who lived a man\u2019s life and died a man\u2019s death, and maybe never knew what had become of me, or worse yet, that he knew but didn\u2019t care, and went on eating the boring stupid apples, and lived a boring stupid life, leaving only those tiny seeds behind him, and that he forgot all about the mixing of the juices and colors and textures, and that he forgot all about me.\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Maura Yzmore is a Midwest-based writer and scientist. Her speculative fiction has appeared in The Arcanist, The Molotov Cocktail, Frozen Wavelets, and elsewhere. Find out more at https:\/\/maurayzmore.com or on Twitter @MauraYzmore.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Most would come into my home only in the summer, when my crooked hands held untold bounty of cherries and apricots and peaches, ripe and dripping with succor, and they would pull at the fruits as if they weren\u2019t parts of my body, as if each pluck didn\u2019t send fire down my nerves. They would …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106009,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,20085],"tags":[20086],"class_list":["post-138212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-tcl-39-spring-2021","tag-the-colored-lens-39-spring-2021","entry entry-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/106009"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=138212"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":138213,"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138212\/revisions\/138213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=138212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=138212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=138212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}