bitten apple the sin is in the sourcing
Failed Haiku Volume 9, Issue 104
This haiku is my personal best because it carries, in just a few words, the full weight of several worlds I am trying to hold together: mythic, modern, and ethical. When I wrote it, I felt something click. The image sharpened, the layers aligned, and the poem delivered its punch without raising its voice.
The phrase “bitten apple” immediately invokes the biblical story of the Fall, the classic symbol of temptation and original sin. But in this haiku, I shift the moral centre. For me, the bite is no longer the transgression. Curiosity, desire, and the act of reaching are fundamental to being human. What troubles me more is what we choose not to see: the systems behind the things we consume, the structures that let us take without questioning their origins. That is why the haiku moves to “the sin is in the sourcing.” It is my way of flipping the Edenic narrative. The real sin lies behind the fruit, not in the tasting of it.
At the same time, the haiku intentionally gestures toward the Apple logo, and therefore toward the modern tech world that powers our lives. I wrote this with the knowledge of how deeply our devices rely on cobalt mined in Congo by children working in dangerous, exploitative conditions. That contrast between the clean, polished bite-mark of a luxury brand and the brutal extraction that enables it felt essential to capture. I wanted a poem that exposes this dissonance without moralising. Haiku must reveal, not preach.
There are other shadows in the poem too: the question of ethical consumption, the invisibility of labour, and the way capitalism creates a distance between pleasure and pain. I like that the haiku suggests all this without directly naming any of it. It trusts the reader to feel the fracture.
This is why I see it as my best work. It is concise yet expansive, rooted in image yet layered with meaning. It holds the Bible and Silicon Valley in the same breath. And in doing so, it reminds me what haiku can do at its sharpest, cut straight to the truth with a single, clean stroke.