I Ate An Apple

• Jupiter Yang, Grade 7
• Poetry
• 2021

I ate an apple.

It was the plumpest, ripest, juiciest thing I have ever tasted. However, to my dismay, the last I saw of it was when it went into my mouth.


I propped up my ‘shirt’ — if you could even call a ragged, stinky, hole-filled cloth a ‘shirt’. Then I proceeded to stumble around searching for that tiny forest of growth at the grey wall’s crack. A little sunlight appeared to be all that was needed. It would be nice if it was the same for me and the growling pig of a stomach I carried.

There was nothing better to do.

I slumped my body right beside the wonder and looked. How could such an ethereal, whimsical sight exist in such a terrible, cruel world?

I imagine the plant’s invisible hands over my eyes, closing them. Sleep and forget…

“LOCA! HOW COULD YOU! YOU WRETCHED, WORTHLESS PIECE OF NOTHING.”

I turned my head. There, stood a towering, bulky lady who had clothing as dark as the soot that rested on her face. That lady was my mother. Her glare seemed to drop the temperature by more than just several degrees. Was she going to slap me?

Unexpectedly, she started making weird sounds that sounded like a shrill wail. Moments later, the sounds morphed into a mix between screaming and cry. Her callous hands were buried into her face as I could narrowly distinguish her amorphous silhouette. Mother was coughing hard like she was choking on something. Her fingers were a tenebrous shade.

I didn’t recognise this ‘person’.

Then she left. Why?

I was all alone again. In the shroud of black, hidden among myriads of buildings in the slum, I wasn’t worth my existence.

I placed my pale hands on the windowsill. I soak in the warmth.

BANG!

The flames shattered the caliginous yonder. Flames released more smoke to the already impossible fog. But nothing wasn’t impossible because the factory ruptured. Broke.

I was glad.

The ‘bosses’ would have kicked the bucket and the foul felonies vanished like thin smoke.

Yet I felt steaming, wet drops of tears clean the cheeks of my face. The tears burnt a hole, not like the times where my mother hit me.

“Remember, you’re hidden away so they won’t take you.”

I screamed. Everyday was a hallucination.

Her final meal was eaten by me. All because of my pig-like stomach.

She had died.