Ghost Apple
When my dad dies, he shrivels into 
nothingness almost instantly. Yet the shape of him lingers: thin, translucent, seized in a last agonal gasp.
The autumn I was born, a storm hit my grandparent’s orchard. Every apple froze and fell but left behind an icy shell. When Dad retold the story, he smiled with the whites of his teeth and eyes. Ghost apples! he’d howl. He never thought of the afters: Grandpa’s three frostbitten fingers, Gram’s cries for the lost harvest.
It’s spring now. All we have is afters. I cradle Dad’s ghost hand and wait for it to melt.
Photo Credit: 5aru 5
You could probably say… that it was a bad apple…