Item Seven

CALYX, A Journal of Art and Literature by Women, Volume 33:1,Winter/Spring 2022

Item One. Pick every sunset-hued apple from the Fuji trees he planted all those years ago, thick hands and silver spade. Fast: to beat the gray fox, the squirrel, the Steller’s jays, the heavy fruit dropping even of its own accord. Taste early taste now their sweet crunch, because after the hours that fill this list, you may wish never to raise their red-gold globes to your mouth again. Even nectar loses its drip.

Item Two. Assemble the cold hard iron peeler and one by one by hundred by thousand core and turn, red-gold peels curling into space. Feel the tendons snake the back of your hands? By the end of the hours that comprise item two, mine look like hers (knobby, the weight of seventy-three years, four children, a dying husband calling out Are you remembering a smooth motion?). Veins cord my arms through my neck to lock the place where jaws should slide open and closed with the joyous ease of a child. But we are no longer children.

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Oil painting “Poppies,” courtesy of the artist and Amy’s friend Ann Hogle