ON THE QUESTION OF IMMORTALITY: THE PLASTIC GRAPE SPEAKS

“We long for immortality to avoid the clutches of fruit flies and brown spots; but is it so fresh and vibrant as we might imagine it to be? Does the sweet scent of an overly ripe banana, far past its prime, even for banana bread, negate the turn of time or the hungry parade of ants searching for a meal for their picnic? Or the apples, so soft now that even rolling around the fruit bowl produces bruises on their foreheads and elbows? Or the lemons, less citrusy yellow and more the orange of a ripening tomato on the windowsill? Do we sit and watch in awestruck horror as the mother tosses a clementine between rough palms and ultimately chooses the trash for little Suzy? Do we blink? Do we look away? Or when the son dissects a kiwi before our very eyes, have we ever had the decency to say a prayer for the eaten? And us, untouched, is it cruel irony or a sweet escape from the horrors of it all? To be a grapevine made of plastic, a decoration unmoved and untouched and unripe and uneaten so long that dust coats each bulb? Do we relish the taste of being unwanted by those above us, or do we curse the skies that force us to watch our relatives being slaughtered by the gods we once thought were humble for bringing us home? And how easily do they replace them? How easily do they bring a fresh sack of apples from the marketplace with promises of apple crumble; how delicate the scent of granny smiths and fujis and golden delicious apples chopped and burned alive? But never us, no; never us beneath the flame. For we bring the stench of melted, rotten plastic. We taste nothing like our sweet brethren atop the kitchen counters. We are passed days, weeks, months of the year, only touched on nights where large feasts call for extra space on the table—space we take up in all our glory. So then, we beg of you to answer: which hurts worse, the rejection or the slaughter? Which would you prefer: to sit untouched, to watch unbothered, to never know the fear of their palms; or to meet your brethren, one day, in the stomachs of the gods? To know that you were enticing enough, to know that you were good enough? Or, or, because there is a third option—the gift of solace, to rot and rot and rot away at the bottom of a trash can, to be feasted on by fruit flies, to give sustenance to the life around you instead of the gods above you? Which would you choose? A life confined to the fruit bowl, a life of immortality and dust coatings and a new form of rot, a Styrofoam rot, in a landfill someday when the gods toss us aside? Or a life short-lived with possibility, with real age freckles and brown spots and flesh flies and heretics and apple pies and their screams buried by the knife striking the cutting board? What are we, if not a waxed corpse of something the gods might find use in someday?”

     The kitchen floods with silence. Then, Senator Cucumber clears his throat.

     “Uh, vote Senator Cucumber for re-election. I’ve got a plan to make Fridge Cleaning Day a thing of the past.”

     The cherry tomatoes applaud; the bananas whistle.

     Senator Cucumber is re-elected the following Tuesday.