Mold Growing On Flowering Strawberries.

Look at the valley of buds.

With a whole season of blossom awaiting them, I wonder; do the buds worry about the inevitable coming of wilt, vermin and rot as do the women, the very women who have been let down by unrealistic beauty standards; who gaze at the mirror with feelings of contempt. Perhaps buds are smarter than us women, with the realization that blossom brings greedy hands upon your root and attracts parasite upon your seed.

With the comfortable warmth closing in on early September, I could steal a peak at the rich ladies who swiped their brow as their red rouge sorrowfully wept down their sharp chins and painted the skin as pale as pink, and the young girls returned from their evening at the Church as they pulled down their veils and shawls and put away their pearls and crosses; they left God back at the gospel as they painted their faces with their mother’s stolen lipsticks and smoked cigarettes which they stole from their father’s shirt pocket. As they spoke in broken bits of French with accents borrowed from a southern grandmother, it reminded me of a robust girlhood that wrinkled into a woman in her 40s.

As harvest plowed into the field of strawberry crop, a view that should’ve fulfilled my mind with the scent of strawberry jams and jellies, milkshakes, pink milks, and shortcakes; soured in my mind as I gazed at the soft spots of fuzzy blue mold on the bright red strawberries. A swarm of locusts raided the area of rot, as an army of ants fed on the moist, dewy flesh of the berries that fell apart, as the naked body of the strawberries were left exposed in the sun, prone to the parasites and honey-hungry predators; the red of the berry was scarcely seen, ugly – as it was covered in black ants and flies.

Picking up the ridden fruit between my index and thumb, as the little berry fell apart in my hold; it wept a pale red juice that trickled down my forefingers. As I applied pressure upon the skin of the fruit, the heart and pulp of the strawberry scattered across the palm of my hand like the bloody remains of a body, droplets of it’s fluid splashed against my cheek.

I ate the moldy strawberry.

With the rotten berry plopped in my mouth, I felt a swarm of ants attack my tongue, scratching against my teeth as I soured my palette with a tart sweetness, tinged with rot and spoil. I chewed the strawberry longer than I should’ve, savoring the taste of ruin and a waste of potential; potential to be a strawberry blondie, a Victoria sponge or a trifle, but ended up in the compost pit, torn apart and taken advantage of by earthworms.

The rotten juice of moldy strawberries running down my lip; swollen by bites of ants and fruit-flies. But food poisoning was the least of my worries. With the flesh of insects crawling in my stomach, I felt an everlasting taste stinging in my mouth, like the bite of a bee; the fuzz of the fruit itching against my throat, like swallowing a ball of cotton.

Yet, within that rotten taste, I could still taste the strawberries, once ripe and sweet, the strawberries that I grew up with. The strawberry jam I had with my milk bread after coming back from kindergarten, the strawberry charlotte cakes and tarts my grandmother made for me after I cried on my first menstruation cycle, the strawberry yogurts I bought from the street-sellers while strolling with my girlfriends, and the raw, unmanufactured strawberries I stole from my neighbor’s fields during a thriving harvest season after I hardly digested my sweet sixteenth. And today, I have grown old and wrinkly, as have the shriveled up and aged strawberries. And still, how sweet is the flesh of the rotten strawberries to the ants and bees, leads me to wonder – how they would’ve loved them had it been fresh and ripe.

The Sun pulled the duvet over it’s feet, and the day only got warmer, my feet heating up as my toes tickled on the hot grass. I could see the distant silhouette of the group of girls, who had now reached on the side opposite the fields, yet I could still hear the chatter about the older boys they fancied in the Church, eagerly sharing their first kisses and over-analyzing any moment, any brush-of-the-knee they shared with their crushes at Sunday school, and in that moment, they were ripe and robust, pink and petite, without ruin.

I ate the strawberries; ridden with pink mold – and I could still taste the sweetness; the sweetness that was once forever, the sweetness that once, was mine.