a fruit and a woman’s hand… when i was a child, i’d be taken along on “friend and family” visits with my mother. this was sort of special as i felt i was being paraded around as the “good son”, granted there were no other male sybling. it was a bore to be sure… sitting around a bunch of women all much, much, older than i was, but the one part that i can clearly recall to this day, was that in each adventure, we would inevitably end up at some standard living room, with a fruit bowl proped on some low table at the center, and a sofa, and some chairs standing guard around it. my mother would settle into a low propped chair and go on talking to the host about all sorts of weather and i would often begin staring at the carpet and phasing out the sounds around me. time would drip away and id be lost in a gaze… usually around this point in the sequence of worldly events, the host would lean over the table and grab a few varieties of fruit, not missing a word from the ongoing conversation. the selection usually consisted of a pear, an orange, a banana, and on occasions a pomegranate. she would then proceed with pealing them one by one, cutting them into bite size pieces while the juice from the fruits would slide down her long red finger nails in slow motion, curving in and around her silver and emerald rings, and onto the plate joining the other fruits… and their juices. i would stare at this phenomenal across the table, through the sun-rays and dust particles from the long curtains. being a fussy child i would dread the inevitable, the moment where Id be offered a piece of that  magic brew… and that moment would come. out of politeness i’d be forced to oblige and pick up a pear, soaked in orange juice and pomegranate and rubbed against a banana, all at that familiar body temperature of the hosts hand, and laced with where ever her long hands had been. needless to say this effected me just a little bit… and forever deprived me of enjoying any type of fruit.

to this day if i’d ever eat an apple (it has been years since) i’d want it to be near freezing temperatures! by uh