The Weight of Summer

The knife rests.

It is not the hunger that pulls us to the table. It is the memory of the sun. We slice into the rind, expecting the scent of rain on dry earth, or perhaps the sharp, sudden sting of a season ending. The fruit yields. It does not ask to be understood. It only asks to be held, briefly, before the juice stains the wood and the afternoon shadows stretch toward the floorboards.

We eat to remember. We eat to forget.

There is a specific bitterness in the peel that lingers long after the sweetness has vanished. It is the taste of time passing. We sit in the quiet, watching the dust motes dance in a shaft of light that refuses to move.

What remains when the plate is finally empty?

Joss Linde has captured this fleeting stillness in the image titled Pomelo & Cranberry. The light rests upon the fruit as if it were a secret. Does it taste like the sun to you?