The fruit bowl

On Sunday we bought six emphatic apples, green as a promise of order.

By Monday they were a still life. By Wednesday, a habit. By Friday nobody looked at them: the house walked straight past, on its way to urgent things.

Today they smell. An insistent sweetness climbing the stairwell of the air, entering the rooms without knocking.

The fruit bowl is the only honest clock in the house: it doesn't tell the hour, it tells the time you gave it.

I eat the softest one standing by the window. It tastes of a week gone by and of sugar that couldn't wait.