Adolescent Avocado

 Someone picked me up yesterday
rubbed their oily thumb over my skin
and said to the girl passing by,
"If you were a fruit,
you'd be an avocado, baby."
I gather from the shrug of her eyes
and her quickened step away from us,
that she wasn't from around here
cause everyone here knows that on the inside
we are the green nectar
lathering up the taste of the indulgent
tongues of California.

I suppose she was not impressed,
for we are just the drummers in the back
of the procession of the march
of the fruit menagerie.
It is the same story
told since time began
The rough skinned
odd shaped ones
Have to be sliced open
reveal their creamy insides
before they get noticed.

I am doomed to
unavoidable vulnerability
or else to shrivel up
in a putrid mess
wondering why aesthetics
had thus determined my destiny.

-- by Paige Cowett