Unripe pear

 

August 15, 2013

 

WOODSTOCK -- I touch the tough skin of the unripe pear and it is hard, these trees rising up at the end of farm dedicated to saving animals, and all I can think of is the growing throbbing I feel inside me, and how I ought not pick a pear so unripe. But I do.

Even on a warm day such as this, the skin is cool and rough against my lips, the tip of my tongue feeling each tiny imperfection as I taste the dew that drips off its tip and into my mouth. The brown step tastes a little bitter, bleeding a little green sap from the branch – but a real taste, like life itself.

This fruit is just too hard to devour all at once, though I ache for its sweetness, and sink my teeth into it, and find it less sweet than I thought, and difficult to chew, and swallow, and yet, I take another bite, and another, until I have only the core of it in my palm, and its seeds falling between my fingers to the ground. Then, only, am I satisfied, then, only can I feel full, deep inside, where the bitter fruit settles inside of me, burying seeds of its own in that unfathomable part that is always hungry, even for unripe bitter fruit such as this.