qarrtsiluni

Two melons on the kitchen counter are reading yesterday’s newspaper. One of them would like to turn the page but the other is a slow reader, mouthing inimitable and acerbic as if they were frozen spoonfuls. The smallest melon doesn’t want to get an ice cream headache. What she wants is the companionship of ginger ale. What the larger one wants is good lighting on a paid vacation. Who can blame each for this one dream? I once knew a girl who loved a melon. For two years her parents refused to claim her as theirs. This is not our daughter, our daughter is gone, they’d say, naming a country she was lost in. One time, Yemen; the next, Nepal. To them, the daughter was better suited to yogurt. They were sure the melon had spoiled her, but who’s to say? I’m told she eventually eloped, that the noticeable change in her — some called it a ripening — was a matter of time and temperature, a tender story, a happenstance of seed.

by Susan Meyers

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