Diane Lockward

I sent him from home hardly more than a child. Years later, he came back loving avocados. In the distant kitchen where he'd flipped burgers and tossed salads, he'd mastered how to prepare the pear-shaped fruit. He took a knife and plied his way into the thick skin with a bravado and gentleness I'd never seen in him. He nudged the halves apart, grabbed a teaspoon and carefully eased out the heart, holding it as if it were fragile. He took one half, then the other of the armadillo- hided fruit and slid his spoon where flesh edged against skin, working it under and around, sparing the edible pulp. An artist working at an easel, he filled the center holes with chopped tomatoes. The broken pieces, made whole again, merged into two reconstructed hearts, a delicate and rare surgery. My boy who'd gone away angry and wild had somehow learned how to unclose what had once been shut tight, how to urge out the stony heart and handle it with care. Beneath the rind he'd grown as tender and mild as that avocado, its rubies nestled in peridot, our forks slipping into the buttery texture of unfamiliar joy, two halves of what we shared.