the tomato, a humble thing

The tomato, a humble thing, this one from a garden nearby. It has scars along its top, like stretch marks on a fat man, the kind that make you look away suddenly when he catches your stare. Its skin is splotched, the face of an old woman. Its insides delicate, ventricles of firmer flesh, separating the cavities of fish organs, unable to support themselves under the press of earth's pull. Perfectly sweet. Its skin, thick like a doormat. You will want to ask it permission to bite through.
The woman there tells me about tomatoes, about the readiness of tomatoes. "Sometime last century you Americans forgot. Now you call red tomatoes ready, green tomatoes not ready." The readiness of the tomato, I learn, rests heavily on its intended use. If one is making a salad, say, a traditionally under ripe creature is just the thing for the job, its acidity being more important than its sweetness. I palm the green tomato she hands to me, firm as a coconut, with a scar running from its top halfway down. It seems to mind, plucked so early from its youth. I give her a quarter and we talk it over, the tomato and I.