I was in a Mexican restaurant in Topeka, Kansas when a man taught me how to peel an avocado. We had driven downtown, past the hate signs, through the empty streets. A town without pedestrians.
This is the way you do it, he demonstrated with his empty hands. This is how you separate the skin from the meat.
It might’ve been a mango.
I learned how to peel something and then I forgot.
It was something about the texture of the skin beneath your fingers.
Something about the flesh beneath the skin.
myfanwy collins 