three apples

three apples is the number of apples i have eaten today. one, two, three. a quantity. solid. a truth, even. no more, no less. when i line them up side by side, they are physical and crunchy, they are three apples.


why can't everything be that sound? i chew them harder because they mock me. vendetta red, green, and mottled.

dear judy blume, it's me, claire. you should know: god is dead. so quit stunting the pre-teens with your vapid prose. we aren't learning the right things and we aren't okay. i've seen more murders on tv than you. i've seen a man with a belly like a balloon and his eyes rolled back and just walked by. i've seen a girl with no face, a dancing bear, a three year old with a cigarette and a dirty mouth, picking pockets at the station. i've seen a man hit his wife, i've seen a fist aimed at me, i've seen a man with no legs beg change under a bridge with the stink of feces rising off him like steam rises off the canals of the city on a hot day. i've seen women cry in the desert, and laugh too. a family of six with thirty teeth between them coming back from the reefs. a gun in the hand of a fifteen year old in a train station. don't you see? we aren't even human anymore.

we make like it's the same, but i can talk about the holocaust over lunch. i can read about darfur with coffee. we still cry, but at all the wrong times: in traffic, when the dishes break, over nothing. we wonder why. i'll tell you. judy, i think i know. i think i know what the young man in the wheelchair with the shriveled limbs knows, i think i know what the one-eyed beggar will tell you. we lament to men because god is dead. we throw his corpse around printed on dollar bills, but it's not for everyone. go to sleep, fill your mouth with mud, push up the next generation of this species, but please don't ask questions because the answers shouldn't shock you anymore. we are the numb generation. we accept your color and religion and gender more now than ever, but it's only because we don't feel anything.

first world, third world, nothing, nothing, nothing.