Memories of Tomato Philosophy

"She looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow."
--Sandra Cisneros

In Italy, you buy a tomato when it's ripe and red. You don't buy a pink tomato and rush it to redness. No. Why? Because would you want someone rushing you? No, you buy it when it's ready. When it's so red you can still feel the warmth of the sun.You let yourself be on the tomato's timeline because some things are out of our hands.

In America, you buy a pink tomato and tell it to be ready tomorrow by 6:00PM. When the tomato is still pink, you decide to cook it anyway while voicing your disappointment. The tomato tastes unripe. Your meal is uninspired. You wish the tomato had a supervisor to whom you could complain. Damn tomato.

In America, you stick an artist in an autoshop. Because she's poor and she needs to work over her Christmas break to afford school next semester. Customers ignore her and ask to speak with the men, she runs in and out of the shop at your request when she could have answered your questions. When her boss orders an extra alternator and starter, he yells at her. Then he tells her he wishes he never had kids and wants to divorce his wife. She rubs her eyes in the bathroom. There's too much pressure and sadness in this grey world of blue collar. She watches the cars driving by outside her window and wonders if anyone is ever happy anywhere.

In Italy, once upon a time, a young girl cooks dinner and shouts hello down to her friends then buzzes them in to the apartment. The walls in the place are sweating from the heat of pasta water. All of the windows are open but the house is still warm. Soon, the bottles are popped and music wafts through the window from the bar across the street. The sound of strumming guitars and rolling laughter. Everyone pauses before the first bite to ponder their luck. They smile.

In America, epiphanies come in waves. A girl wonders if she's being melodramatic and ridiculous. In a family where everyone has always done the work that needs to be done, she wonders if she gets to choose work she will actually want to do. She wishes she wasn't such a sensitive fucking extrovert who hates yelling and discord. Maybe this is all life will hold for her. Dissatisfaction and existence devoid of inspiration. Liberal arts education and thin skin compete with Mexican Immigrant and Black values. She thinks she's fucked. Maybe.

Men

He is my fifty-something boss

sitting uncomfortably while leaning too far back 

in his desk chair

saying "Jesus Christ"

He hopes his youngest isn't pregnant

His eyes are tired

He later tells me

it's time to delete all of the

dead customers in his database

"Been open too long I guess,"

Everybody's dying, he says,

Stifling laughter.

I ask 

Another man how he is

and he collapses into tears

because he's dying

and apparently

I'm the first person to ask that

in a long while

He cries for a half an hour 

then pats me on the shoulders

saying he's sure I'm a nice girl.

My coworker plays mourning mariachi

and says his fiance left him again

because she can't trust him

He punches his desk over and over

Jesus Christ.

A delivery man comments, 

"It's good you're back.

They missed their shopgirl."

I sit to myself quietly typing

Pretending to order parts

Is this what it's like to have

no one to tell your sorrows to?

Do you sigh with sad eyes at the young service writer,

and cry and tell her your problems?

Because the world sees the cracked hands

and oil stains

but not a man (or men) with hearts full of things

they don't understand.

Amidst a Southern Sky

 For my favorite Great Uncle, Robert.
I met you in the sky last night
Somewhere over West Texas
Between Amarillo and Ralls
You were young again
Breathing free
Sitting on the porch
Of a big white plantation house
that we owned
I smiled
And for once, instead of swatting yours away
I lit two cigars
and sat down beside you
"Say Slim," you began
the cigar dancing between your lips
I sigh,
The nickname never fit
"Where's Dennis?"
Out he comes from inside the house
With three plates of your pecan pie
and dominoes jingling in the pocket of his overalls
 The stories begin
You drove at ten
and hustled moonshine
stolen from gangsters
to buy you dreams
you could never afford
From somewhere inside the house
I hear Clara cooking
creating a melody of pots and pans
I smile and think,
this must be heaven
because it is.
Laughing through the smoke
suspended in time
we three
porchsitting in a Southern sky

Reflections

“Ever since I realized, there was someone called a colored girl or an evil woman, a bitch or a nag I been trying not to be that and leave bitterness in somebody else’s cup. Come to somebody to love me without deep and nasty smelling scars from lye or being left screaming in a street of lunatics whispering, ‘Slut, bitch, bitch. Nigga, get out of here with all of that.’ I didn’t have any of that for you. I brought you what joy I found. And I found joy.”- Ntzosake Shange

Three Christmases ago, I remember staring at you from the passenger side of your car and knowing, without a shred of doubt, that I was going to love you. It wasn't a question, or an idea, it just, was. I try to remember the silly things about you, the things that haven't been crowded out with anger and bitterness. I remember the way your hair fell into your eyes and the way you looked at me like you were seeing the sun for the first time. When I think of you, and yes, it will always be a lot because I am always thinking, I try to remember these things. Kissing in my birthday at midnight, those long drives in your truck, I try to remember these things. I know we're done because we always wanted different things. Because you believe in God, and I believe in everything and it's not our love I miss. I miss memories of simplicity, before I knew it would never last.