Watermelon

Watermelon rind is an earned privilege. It means you are with - in community, at a potluck, part of a familial unit. At the store, I buy for one. I purchase precut, ruby cubes enclosed in clear plastic.

In moments of arrogance and apathetic wastefulness, I have bought a whole globe. I have carried its green and yellow, bulbous weight up three flights of stairs, using my hipbone as cavern. I wonder if a child fits this way.

I have taken a stream of cool, clean, kitchen tap water and rinsed, both palms of my hands spread with an even layer of soap. Around the curve of rind I lather and smooth and cleanse. More water. Dirt scatters in the sink and runs back to where it originated, having completed its purpose and labor. Can you image drying a watermelon with a dishtowel and feeling something about it while you are? I do. How it carries a dull sheen, how I hope it will fit in the refrigerator?

Hope. I have hoped in a fruit. That it will be just ripe, and not overly so. How it will have taken its time. How it will be sweet. How the knife will be steady and make that sensual first incision. How the juice will run, the rind will snap, the halves crack and fall open. How my expectations will all be met - no, surpassed - and bowls will be filled with those glorious, irregular, red shapes of melon. Enough for a lifetime, it will seem.

How I usually select the wrong one. After weighing and thumping and listening hard; after checking the appearance, comparing it to others; after standing idling and finally going with the one I have a feeling about; it comes to this: a dull red, mealy texture, vows to give up on watermelon until next year. Still eating, tasting, trying to find the one sweet piece in the whole body. Wondering how there is so much to navigate and if the dissection will ever end.

The excess will feel ridiculous. I am alone in the kitchen and I have sinned. What a waste, to desire the whole globe when a quarter will do. I will stoop to pick up a fallen seed and when I get its slick shape between my fingers it will feel like a penance. I will internalize apologies to the farmer who rose in the darkness and gave up his life to sowing and irrigation so I could perform a small surgery on the fruits of his labor, knowing I will throw half of it away in seven days.

I will pile all of the pieces up in various-sized containers and hide them in the fridge. I will think about something else - the way I trail passion for people and ideas out of my back pocket every day of my life until there is nothing left but crumbs and a devoted following of birds to my back. The way I work so hard at compartmentalizing excess that I have unnecessarily brought into my house with my own two woman hands.

There will be walks on hot days where I consider manna. I will come home and pick those watermelon pieces out with my fingers and swallow until my throat is cool and quiet. I will eat the white seeds.

Somewhere in my heart a memory of a tray full of triangles will rise. There is laughter and lots of people expectorating seeds at great distances. I sputter and fail. Black dots land at my feet. Bleached rinds pile in a trashcan and we fluster our arms at the flies in their nirvana. He who takes the trash bag out will feel the full weight of things.

In July, I make a decision swearing allegiance to abundance and gathering that will make me feel acute isolation. In August I wonder why I cannot be satisfied with a small container pre-portioned for me. A thing I did not have to toil with. A serving I can waste without hurting anyone else. I will welcome the comfort of self-absorption and spare living. There will be realignment toward what is just enough.

What happens is, I will arrive one day to a small market looking for eggs, and love will be waiting for me. Tan and simple with a hidden glory. I will take it home and there will be just enough: salt, pepper, butternut squash.