Wooed in the Supermarket

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Allen Ginsberg.

I hear the supermarket's a good place to get a date. In Vons this afternoon, I fell in love with a gorgeous eggplant, and just had to ask it to come back to my place. Luckily, the eggplant agreed.

I have no idea what I’ll make with it—probably parmesan—but not today. I want to admire it for a few more days, in much the same way Rosie O’Donnell once said she wanted to hire Tom Cruise to do work around her house, just for the show.

Summer fruit looks to be all done for this season. The trays that had held lofty pyramids of white nectarines and massive peaches the last few months have been replaced with apples. Don’t get me wrong, I love apples—I really do—but it was mid-eighties today. Those apples must’ve been flown in from below the equator. Summer can’t be over yet, can it? Bryan and I haven’t grilled enough dinners. We need more Saturdays in the backyard with Time magazine and glasses of cranberry juice. I want to take Louie on more nighttime walks, and feel the just-cooling air on my skin. In college, a roommate and I used to run through the campus sprinklers behind our apartment on late nights that were still nearly eighty degrees. Can I do this in our complex?

But the last few mornings have been so foggy it’s almost mist. It clears, but soon it will be clearing later and later in the morning. By the time May gray comes around—with the next summer hiding behind a tight corner—I will be thirty-one. Is that too old to run through sprinklers? What peaches and what penumbras!