Squishy fruit

We were harvesting fruit from the small trees in the front yard. Some were clearly not ready, hard and as green as the leaves around them. But some called to you, smelling of the promise of sweet and feeling of heavy give. And then there were others that bore the color of sweet but gave in too freely, one that was perhaps forgotten last season but stubbornly hangs on...We cut them off the tree with special attention not to mix them with the others.

Sometimes you run into the squishy fruit, continually taking energy from the one that gives rise to all the other sweet fruit. They must've once gloried in the sun, fleeting but passed the sweet and evading removal. My nose tasted the necrosing juice as my fingers validated the now almost parasitic hanger-on.

It's only through the experience of picking many fruit that you recognize the feel of the one stubbornly left behind, and forgive the guise --- when you have a squishy one, that this victory has no casualties. In fact, the victors are the blossoms that have yet to bloom.