Pineapple

I wandered through the markets searching for the very sweetest fruit. I had sampled the most extraordinary peaches and plums, cherries as red and as delightful as coffins, pears and apples as gorgeous as praise, but it was the pineapples that genuinely concerned me. They were stacked in pyramids, with their green heads upright and curious. It was their squat, corpulent bodies that attracted me – orange and blue, yellow and red, speckled with the blackest black. I insisted that they were cut open. I demanded that they were split in half with a sharp knife and that the fibrous interior was removed to leave on either side, prior to the limit of the harsh, reptile skin, a liquid flesh of golden sweetness. Yet I scarcely ever tasted it. I left it untouched. I left it to the craven fruit mongers to deal with. That is until I found the perfect pineapple, the most utterly delectable piece of fruit. This I consumed with a sense of oblivion.