The Year of Little Harvest
By Aman Alam
The year the orchard failed,
the trees held their fruit like unsent letters –
hard, green, withholding.
My sister said it was the frost in April,
that treachery of warmth followed by blade.
My father said nothing.
He pressed his thumb into an apple
as if testing a bruise on the body of the world.
At dusk the fields turned the color of old bronze.
Crows wrote their crooked signatures
across the sky’s thin vellum.
We gathered what would not ripen.
Baskets knocking against our knees,
we moved row to row like monks
counting beads of failure.
My sister split one fruit open with her teeth,
its center pale as an unlit sanctuary.
She spat it into the weeds.
In the shed, jars from better summers
stood in militant rows–
apricot, pear, plum,
their amber throats sealed with wax.
Mother ran a cloth over the lids,
a small liturgy of polish.
“These will carry us,” she said.
That night the wind rose out of the low fields.
It moved through the orchard
lifting leaves, letting them fall.
I lay awake listening
to branches comb the side of the house.
Toward dawn I walked outside.
Fallen fruit freckled the ground–
I picked one up,
pressed it to my forehead.
Cold, yes, but fragrant –
a sweetness bruised into being.
If there is a heaven,
perhaps it is not a garden perfected
but a garden endured –
trees allowed to fail,
hands allowed to blister.
When the sun rose it struck the orchard plainly,
just light entering what remained.
My father stood beside me,
his shadow long and apostolic.
He bent, lifted a fallen apple,
held it in his palm, then bit into it.
Juice ran down his chin.