Something Human

We were discussing tomatoes at work.

Some people have strong feelings about them tomatoes, mostly negative too. Ashleigh said her cousins loved them. They lived on a farm and they’d gross her out with their tomato-eating practices. She said they’d eat them right off the plant. That they’d put them tomatoes into their mouths and bite them like you would an apple.

She showed me with her hands how the juice would flow from the corners of their mouths. It’d go down over their jaws and seep into their clothes—tomato blood, placenta, and seeds.