One Unbroken Piece

Someone asked for hidden talents

and I said I can peel an apple in one go—

one long unbroken spiral, patient,

my grandmother's trick—and someone said okay, show

me. So I did it at the kitchen sink,

knife angled shallow, turning the fruit

slow against the blade, trying not to think,

the way she taught me, find the route

the peel wants, stop forcing it.

It came off whole. Someone said wow.

Someone else said that's incredible, and it

was, for maybe twenty seconds, and now

the guy with the marathon times was talking

and I was standing there with this long pale coil

of skin in my open hand, not knowing

where to put it, the apple already going

brown on the counter, the trick complete,

the wow already somewhere else in the room,

and my grandmother's been dead six years

and I'm holding a peel at a party

like evidence of something

I can't explain and no one asked for.