My Favorite Apple

Today a frigid wind faced me, I walked methodically from the library back to the store. My lunch break was drawing to a close, I kept my head down, I was eating a braeburn apple. I thought of apples, good ones anyway, and what it is exactly that makes them good. There’s something about biting into one and pulling a perfect scale of apple skin and fruit into your mouth, those pieces that don’t fit the contour of your teeth, that are wider than you think. It’s as if it was sliced off with a gold-brown pocket knife as you’re sitting in a stubble field leaning up against the truck or a round bale. A good apple isn’t carved, it’s broken and split into mouth sized pieces, a good apple is taken apart and, as it is, it makes music.
Yesterday she asked what kind of apple I was eating, “It’s a braeburn” admitted like an old habit.
“Honeycrisps are better”
“yes, I know, honeycrisps are my favorite”
…
She brought me a honeycrisp today, she defied my belief that they were out of season, she defied my make-believe misgivings. So that now I’ve changed my mind,…Turns out Honeycrisps aren’t my favorite apple. No, you; you are my favorite apple.