“Strawberries Are Made to Mold” | Dani Barber | Poetry

Strawberries Are Made to Mold

Dani Barber

I went to the farmer’s market last week for the first time in months. The air smelled like dirt and leaves and a thousand warm bodies under hot tents. It smelled like plastic too, and tarmac and a city holding its breath waiting for the first chills to arrive. The produce is good right now, bright and firm. The sellers look tired, as always. Everyone here is tired and moving in a sleepy mass to buy bundles of greens that will be left to rot under the bottom shelf of the fridge. There’s a slime there at the bottom, where waste collects and solidifies. It’s an unintentional slime, the kind of slime that you can never get clean, a guilt that the beautiful bundles of kale and spinach have turned to liquid disappointment and settled into place. The noise of the market is an unsettling din, too loud for the occasion. Everything is too loud these days–I have been living in a sensory deprivation chamber built out of my couch and a thousand blankets and the hum of traffic on the highway. I want to climb into one of the passing cars and feel the movement of the road and drift to sleep, or feel the movement of the road and beg them to pull over and let me spit out the window when my stomach tries to take over my throat. I’m tired of motion and tired of stillness. The whole world turning feels more relentless lately, like we can feel the movement under our toes and in our bones and it is sinking into our marrow and we desperately want off the ride and we beg the operator to stop but he is too busy eating an overpriced corn dog that someone bribed him with to let them ride three to a row on the Ferris wheel to notice our quiet pleas. We keep turning. We want off but if we get off there would be nothing left but dizzy movement, muscle memory, a fake shifting somehow worse than the physical turn. I am buying strawberries that I’ll eat cold and mushrooms that I’ll baste in butter and rosemary and fry until they are crispy and beautiful. I’ll share the meal with my love and try to keep my cat from stealing a stray cap. We’ll feel the motion but it will be quiet and slow and gentle and we’ll copy that motion as we pet our cat while she sleeps between us. The world rocks us to sleep and we don’t protest it.

I grab a handful of chard; maybe tomorrow I’ll start eating healthier.