by Lori Yeghiayan Friedman
Three apples fell from Heaven, one for the storyteller, one for the listener and one for the eavesdropper.* From each apple fell a million stories. From each story fell an alphabet from which fell a civilization. From each civilization fell violence and also a tender love. From each tender love fell a family and children. From each child fell a grandmother who made pakhlava and built an ark full of myths. From each ark fell a mountain, and then a nation, and then a war. From each mountain, nation, war, fell the dead, the survivors. From each survivor fell a wound, a world, a wish, a Heaven, three apples and this story.
* How Armenian folktales begin
Lori Yeghiayan Friedman is an Armenian-American writer living in Portland, OR. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Post Road Magazine, XRAY Literary Magazine, The Nasiona, Hippocampus, JMWW, The Citron Review and Bending Genres. Her creative nonfiction piece ‘How to survive a genocide’ appeared in Exposition Review’s 2020 Act/Break issue and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She earned an MFA in Theatre from UC San Diego.
Emerge Literary Journal 