I never told you about how shopping for Gala apples used to weigh so heavy on me. You were always so particular about them. Their shape. Their shine. Their texture and crunch. It always felt like the margin of perfection was too narrow for me to get right—the learning curve of apple scoring too steep for me to master. So it became your job to hand select each ruby prize. You did so lovingly, only bringing home the best and sweetest red globes for our lips to caress.
For the first year after you left, every time I reached for a Gala apple from the produce stand I felt a tightness in my chest. I had never told you about the imaginary scoring system that I failed to learn. But even after you were gone, the pressure to pluck perfection from the pile lingered. Each time I went to the grocery store the anxiety returned. The longer it went on, the sillier it felt. The visceral tightening in my stomach, bringing back a flood of memories of the life we used to have. Of the people we used to be.
Eventually I stopped buying Gala apples, for fear that the weight of them would crush me. I switched to Granny Smith, because the touch of them didn’t break my heart. They were tart rather than sweet, and their bruises never bothered me.
I’ve since found equilibrium in my grocery store escapades, and the bottom of my fruit drawer holds space for both luscious red and green orbs. It doesn’t shake me anymore when I pull the drawer out and they roll around together. They’re just a piece of you and a piece of me, all that remains of our beautiful, chaotic hyperbole.