Avocados by Brett Warren

Avocados

Your boyfriend worked on an avocado farm.
He’d bring us flats of the ones too ripe
for grocery stores. We’d watch from the door
while he parked his truck and reached
into the bed, shirtsleeves rolled up, arms
muscular and tan from all that lifting

and the sun. I wasn’t a fan—in fact
one night I pushed him up against a wall
when I thought he was being sanctimonious
with you. That was the word I used,
sanctimonious. He was stunned.

The land of avocados was an embarrassment
of riches, no matter how much guacamole
a girl could mash up. So we gave avocados
to everyone, even the building manager,
who didn’t call the cops or kick us out
when one of our parties got a little loud.

Now it’s supply-chain problems, bad climate,
avocados watery half the time, not so rich
anymore, pits no longer perfect planets
you could stick toothpicks in, grow a tree
if you wanted to. We never wanted to.
Did I ever apologize to that boyfriend

for that time with the wall? He said
we were full of ourselves and went back
to Oklahoma, where no one would imply
he was anything but a nice guy. No one
cried. But he was right—we took chances.
We had strange friends, stayed out too late
when we went dancing. That boyfriend

was the future, and we weren’t there yet.
We still wanted to sit barefoot in the sun,
scooping buttery curls from alligator shells
we held in our hands. You and me, a pair
of mismatched chairs. All we ever needed
was a sharp knife, a little coarse salt.

*

Brett Warren (she/her) is a long-time editor and the author of The Map of Unseen Things (Pine Row Press, 2023). Her poetry has appeared in Canary, Halfway Down the Stairs, Harbor Review, Hole in the Head Review, ONE ART, Rise Up Review, and other literary publications. A triple nominee for Best of the Net 2024 (Poetry), she lives in a house surrounded by pitch pine and black oak trees—nighttime roosts of wild turkeys, who sometimes use the roof of her writing attic as a runway. brettwarrenpoetry.com