Apples Don’t Know

Apples Don’t Know

Apples don’t know
which side they fall on.
They grow red just the same,
tasting of sun and old rain.

A grandmother picks mint
by the stone wall,
humming a tune
that crossed long before wires did.

Children draw maps in the dust
with sticks,
but the wind always blows them away.
Borders, they learn,
are not written in earth
only in rules
they did not write.

Somewhere beyond,
a cousin lights a lantern,
the same light
we watch from here
through the branches.
We do not wave
but we notice.

Jasmine climbs the fence
without fear.
No one told it
there was a line
it shouldn't cross.

The rooster crows on both sides.
Rain falls without asking.
Even prayers
those whispered after dusk
rise together,
woven with the same longing.

And in the evening,
when the mountain turns blue,
we drink tea
sweet with memory,
and speak of cherry trees,
of summers that tasted
like home,
even when we didn’t say the word.

The elders still tell stories
of roads that once curled
like threads between hills,
when footsteps were passports,
and the only gate was the sky.

My aunt still stitches
with thread from the old place,
her hands remembering
what maps have forgotten.

There’s a song
that belongs to both sides
one part sung here,
the other lost
somewhere between
static and silence
on the radio.

And still
the mountain stays whole,
the apples ripen,
the jasmine returns each spring.
What divides cannot undo
what lives in the roots.