On Strawberries

A by harmfulpoet

Life is like a box of strawberries. Or so I’ve begun to think so. It’s perhaps the simplest, most silly metaphor for it. Well Forrest Gump said life is like a box of chocolates, and I agree, but I’m eating strawberries at the moment, so we’re going to talk about those.

It’s a small box and the red orbs just sit there gregariously in contact, without quite realizing what one means to the other. Some are disturbingly pale, while others a brilliant red filled with life. Some are cute and miniscule and others are large muscular and intimidating, there seems to be nothing special about the moderate average sized strawberries, except I often find that they taste the juiciest. Let’s not forget that there are also mutant strawberries, those often rejected and cast aside, some of which are simply disfigured and pulpy while others are rotten and old, graced with a white moss.

What Forrest Gump failed to acknowledge is that chocolates in no way have any way of representing hair when analogized to humans (supposing that’s what he was really saying, even though he wasn’t) while strawberries in fact do. There are strawberries with a small thin green sprout atop, graceful and modest, and there are others topped with a brilliant green mesh you can catch easily.

Some of them taste flavourful, there’s an expectation of a rough grazing on the tongue, with the site of the skin, peppered with seeds, followed by a pleasant surprise as you bite into one, ever so carefully, as the bittersweet juice seeps in and flows around your mouth, uplifting in the slightest bit, until you find yourself to have greedily eaten the strawberry in its entirety. Just as you might meet a new, seemingly meaningless person, but grow to love them once you look at what’s inside.

In a sense you never really do know what you’re going to get from a box of strawberries. Perhaps that’s just part of the excitement. Life is like a box of strawberries.