The Fruit I Do Not Know

I love cruises. I love buffets. I especially love fruit salad—except… I don’t like cantaloupe. Maybe that’s in my shadow. But the more I’ve grown, the more I’ve realized: sometimes our shadows hold treasures we just haven’t unlocked yet. This poem is my ode to cantaloupe.

Buffet lines, stainless trays—
they lay it out like abundance,
but really it’s cubes of compromise.

Honeydew hums when it’s ripe,
pineapple cuts you open with light,
strawberries seduce you scarlet.
And then—
cantaloupe.
Orange blocks of inevitability.
The NPC of fruit salad,
the background character
who somehow keeps getting lines.

No one dreams of cantaloupe.
No one writes love songs for cantaloupe.
And yet,
like a karmic bill collector,
it keeps showing up.

—And then the turn:
maybe it’s not unloved at all.
Maybe there’s a secret tribe
who see it and whisper:
“Finally.”

To them, this orange cube is nectar.
They love it cool on a hot day,
folding it inside prosciutto—
"melone e prosciutto,"
a sweetness and a salt
so simple it feels eternal.

What if there’s a whole dimension of reality
I’ve never touched—
a sweetness I cannot taste,
a joy I cannot fathom?

And that delights me.
Because if cantaloupe can be loved,
what else do I not know?

Proof is right there—
in the fruit salad at the hotel buffet,
where I refuse the cantaloupe,
and yet, someone else
takes it with joy.