Milky Way

He didn’t see his first avocado until he was 21. He’d gone out for a pub lunch on a Friday in Birmingham and woken up at the end of an airport runway in the Canary Islands the next day with a cotton mouth hangover.

For two weeks he slept in ditches and between rows of banana trees and wished he’d brought more money.

The first one he saw bounced off a passing truck loaded with them. The friend who’d shared the airplane ride with him smirked at the luck.

Oh, I love these, he said, and sat down to open the dark oblong object with a pocket knife.

The deep green flesh was buttery and good, refreshing and filling at once.

It was a gift out of nowhere, a sign of goodness and abundance despite the careless way he’d been living.

40 years later, when his wife made the bowl that had the deep colors of the Milky Way in it, he knew just what to fill it with.