The orchard had mastered the art of belonging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every cherry wore the same muted face, hanging quietly beneath the leaves, ripening without ambition. They swayed together, aged together and were expected to disappear together, picked, eaten and forgotten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then one of them remembered colour. It did not become sweeter. Nor larger. It simply refused to fade with the rest. The others whispered that it was showing off. That it had forgotten where it came from. That no one survives by standing apart. Yet it was the only fruit the eye could not leave. The branch bent under the same weight, the wind sang the same song and the orchard remained unchanged. Only one cherry dared to become itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sometimes being the black sheep means discovering that, in a world determined to blend into sepia, red is the new black.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sometimes being the black sheep means discovering that, in a world determined to blend into sepia, red is the new black…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4002,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","_ppma_block_editor_authors":""},"categories":[64,188,13],"tags":[191,190,189],"ppma_author":[579],"class_list":["post-4001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-experimental-prose","category-fable","category-trails","tag-black-sheep","tag-cherry","tag-fable"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t