Photo by Amr Taha™ on Unsplash
by Lynn Mundell
It was Gran’s 80th birthday, but that was before Little Charles ate the Gravenstein, his teeth in their green braces going at the fruit like a toy combine harvester. When he left the apple core on the kitchen table, all of us could see right away the round face of the singer-actress Selena Gomez staring back at us from the fruit’s remaining flesh, just like she’d been sculpted by a very gifted greengrocer or perhaps God. Later, after the neighbors came, then the public, hordes of people like agitated ants, some said Selena Apple had spoken to them in her distinctive monotone, a few, probably liars, even saying she had offered advice on how to heal their maladies, including non-issues like skin tags. We got good money from the press, enough to get the Nissan serviced and for us to make the trek to Disneyland, except for Gran, who was better off staying at home feeding the cats. We’re celebrating Selena Apple Day from here on out, with spiced cider, a cake with candles Little Charles will blow out for luck, and bags of all sorts of apples we’ll eat in the hope of a getting a new Selena. This one is really kaput —her pretty face has shriveled until she is worthless, looking like any old lady, nothing like a miracle at all.
Lynn Mundell is publisher of Centaur and co-founder of 100 Word Story. Her chapbook Let Our Bodies Be Returned to Us was published by the University of South Carolina in 2022.
