Bearing Fruit

fruits stored in the crisper spend their entire lives waiting to be wanted, some gather quietly in a woven basket on the dining table. coldness felt by unpeeled kiwi, pinapple, and mangoes. on the other hand, avocado and banana were collecting the afternoon light that slips through white lace curtains.  

grapes remain suspended on their brittle stems like tiny constellations. guava said ‘hello’ to anyone,  and perfumes the room before they remember it is there. all possible red shades of apples reflecting windows and passing shadows. 

sweet tangerines as orange as the sunset silhouette when mother comes in. handing a new friend of the  fruits, her hand brushed over mine. “Here’s the kiwi you ask for.” its skin as rough as old tree bark touches her soft palms.   

the whole garden of fruits compiles as one in every corner. as a whole, they are admired. never chosen to be  part of the taste bud. perhaps that is the burden of completeness—to look too intact for interruption. 

then mother walks into the kitchen. the knife greets the wooden board with the gentlest certainty, and  suddenly the room remembers hunger. mangoes bloom into amber crescents. oranges surrender their  delicate membranes until nothing remains but skin and seeds. carved apples carefully bitten and become pale moons with their bitter hearts. 

even the kiwi changes. its skin, coarse enough against your fingertips, falls away in a single curling  ribbon and revealing its green so impossibly alive it seems borrowed from the first day the earth learned  how to breathe. ah, someone has to be mistakenly writing constellations inside a fruit instead of across the sky! those tiny black seeds scatter in perfect circles. its center is light and soft, almost glowing, reflecting like the place where forgiveness began. 

doesn’t a two-sliced kiwi remind you of something?  

green around the edges and dark at the center. watching deeply. sometimes, i imagine the inside out of  kiwi, as deep brown as your eyes once rested inside mine before either of us learned how to look away. 

mother never asks whether anyone wants fruit. she simply cuts as though desire arrives more easily  when someone else has already removed the difficult parts. the peels disappear first, then the seeds of  papaya we would have complained about, the stubborn cores of mangoes that mother always took  because nobody wanted it. she edits every imperfection before we ever ask to confront it ourselves.  

a fresh plate appears where the basket once stood. and somehow, hands reach instinctively and fruit  vanishes embarrassingly fast. leaving only damp fingerprints and the faint perfume of citrus lingering  in the air.  

it is strange that nothing about the fruit has changed except the shape. the sweetness that was always  there and the color had already been brilliant enough to rival stained glass beneath the afternoon sun.  yet, none of it mattered until love was put into it.  

until someone’s hands became sticky with mango sap.

until someone’s fingertips smelled like orange peel.  

until someone’s hand burnt through the sharpness of pineapple. 

i used to believe mother was simply cutting fruit for us. believing it now into a translation of love and  small language for her children to understand.

through slices of nature’s art, the sweetness becomes easier to receive when someone has first carried the weight of the knife.