At the apple’s noisy core, there are seeds of arsenic. Not a fraction is left for the nosey flies because at the end of my life – at the close – the world will know my worth.

There is a woman whose thoughts are the most alone. I have watched her throughout the days, walking the hallways, chin angled at the floors as she stops a door with a hesitant toe. Giving frail handshakes, her uneasy eyes squint out the bright window. She prefers the world clouded. When she sits, she keeps her unscathed feet on her heels so that her thighs appear thinner, and keeping her eyes at her scaly nailbeds, she avoids the reflective metal doors in the elevator on the way down.

At midday, out of the bustling cafeteria, she leaves a spoonful of peas and carrots on her plate as she tips the tray with a crash. My imagination follows those sad, blurry greens and oranges hurtling towards waste. We’ve all been left to rot, I try to convey to them, and the earth will soon need you.

It makes me yearn for the woman with her pale, flashing looks. My imagination takes her arms and stares into her until some emotion builds in the corners of her eyes. Then, as she melts like warmed candlewax, my needy hands try chaotically to contain her. I cup my hands, breathing in her aroma, and I taste her frail bones and drink in every ounce of distaste she has for herself from her blood. You’re worth every minute of this universe’s time, I whisper, and everything you touch needs you. I want to show her a reflection and twist her dark hair into a braid to admire those purely beautiful cells. She shall come here too, and we will see a seed of worth in the scraps that I call myself.