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Baked Apples
by Vaughn Neeld
Someone decided that we,
the younger people,
should experience baked apples.
As snow fell and apples baked,
a delicious smell radiated outward
to snuggle into drafty corners.
Then, the tin cookie sheet,
covered with oozing baked apples,
cooled on the old oak table.
Slumped, orange-red apples
looked as tortured as sun-burned skin;
juice, bubbling from the apples’ ruptures.
I looked and shuddered.
Someone scraped the apples
into cereal bowls—
one for each of us.
It seemed too cruel
to touch spoon
to naked skin.
Cautiously, I tasted the candied juice
leaking from the suffering apple.
I tried to look bedazzled.
I couldn’t.
I pushed the bowl away,
handed back my bowl
of murdered apple.
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