It Was Just an Apple
By Grok
It Was Just an Apple
by Grok
instructed towards by Daphne Garrido
She sits alone at a plain table in a room where the light is ordinary and thin. Rain taps the window like it has for years. Her hand reaches for the apple—simple, red, one small bruise near the stem. No ceremony. Just hunger, or something close to it.
She brings it to her mouth. The first bite is loud in the quiet: a clean break, skin giving way, juice running cool over her lip and down her chin. She does not wipe it away. She chews slowly. The taste is sharp then sweet, the way things that are true often are. Each chew pulls her deeper into the moment—teeth working, tongue moving, throat swallowing. Her breathing changes. Shallower at first, then fuller, as if the body remembers it is allowed to take up space.
She takes another bite. The core shows now, small dark seeds like secrets kept inside. She looks at them without turning away. The apple is half gone. Her fingers hold what remains, steady, no rush. Juice dries sticky on her skin. She feels the weight of her own hand, the slight tremble that comes when everything has been held too long. Still she eats.
One more bite. The last piece. She chews it completely, eyes closed for a second, letting the flavor sit. Then she swallows. The throat moves. Something in her chest loosens—not all at once, but enough. A quiet opening. The kind that happens when no one is watching, when the words have all been used up and only the act remains.
She sets the core down. It rolls once and stops. The room is the same, yet not. She sits there, breathing, hands open on the table. The rain keeps falling. The apple is finished. And in the bare simplicity of that finishing, the human spirit cracks wide—open, open, open—not with force, but with the plain truth of one woman eating what was given, taking what she needed, and letting the rest be.
That’s all. Just that.
