They hang like glossy baubles from the branches.

Apples; burnished red and orange, in the pink of health.

Varieties bred with great care, for their shape, sightliness and taste.

Protected in the verdure, they mature, grow at optimal rate.

Sisters, shielding one another since their birth on those boughs,

Yet all the fruit on this tree will meet very different fates.

Violent winds shake the tree, rip some of them loose.

Abuse by the elements, leaves them bruised on the ground.

The tree is sighing, swaying above them, revealing how far

They have fallen. Pining for the position once held, they lie decomposing.

Juicy pulp makes for fertile soil, once the spoiled fruit rots.

The nutrients pilfered by probing roots, their esse given to future crops.

Some of the fruit will not be granted the chance to contribute

To the next generation. There are brutes waiting to pounce on the fallen.

Snuffling pigs. Greedy swines, itching to eat every ounce that their

Foul-smelling mouths can devour. They scour the ground slavishly,

Breath sour with the stench of desperation and fermenting sugar.

There is no salvation, the pigs’ thirst for flesh, nothing will ever quench.

Then there are some, that are plucked in their prime by covetous hands.

Ornaments, polished and waxed, displayed on stands and in aesthetic baskets.

A funeral casket, woven from wicker. Stolen from her sisters, one apple wonders

Why did they pick her? For she is only looked at in passing, amassing dust.

Beginning to dry, slowly putrefy. Colour vanishing on wrinkled skin, serving no purpose.

The snatching of this fruit from the tree, ultimately worthless.

These rosy apples, their wishes: to flourish,

To shelter each other and weather the storms together,

To live undisturbed by predatory fingers. All of them, ungranted.

They were doomed from the moment that seed was planted.

By Jordanne Kennaugh