Papaya No More.

• Author: Rhodes, Heidi Andrea Restrepo
• Position: Poem

Papaya No More He had been to a movie theater once, after a market sojourn to Cali, and from the attic of his heart he could unfold in the entirety of an afternoon the 8 mm reel of another time: Of days he and his son would run barefoot in the cool morning grass laughing their teeth into the nectarous flesh of papaya they had themselves grown savoring the movement of clouds until his wife would call them to their day's work. This simple joy; son, papaya, morning, beloved. Papaya was the taste of freedom; Of family; of life growing from the seeds of one's hands. Papaya was the taste of love and breakfast; Of uxorious laughter in the sex-patterned light-dust near the window. Papaya was the taste of possibility after rain, Of neighbors; and afternoon ruminations. It was the taste of memory; The pride and sweat of hard labor; The face of his son in those years when a lambent innocence Could be caught on the breath of childhood. But this, now, is another time, A time of...