There is something remarkably therapeutic about making a salad.
You start with lettuce
the verdant, many-colored shades of green are lives, yours, mine, your loved ones.
Life is to be cut up by the knife of Fate, united,
separated and thrown together into the white bowl of the universe,
giving the world its first splash of color.
Tomatoes, not so red as the blood in our veins, are next to be thrown in; which is only fitting as these fist-sized fruits are roughly the size of a human heart
or a human womb.
Our hearts are constantly mashed up and beaten about,
seeds spreading around as you fold the tomatoes in with the lettuce.
When you cut the carrots, you are cutting up your thoughts,
making small what was once big,
separating what was once connected
into pieces of different size and weight.
When united into one again,
they can change the world.
And, if you're like me, you like to put grapes in your salad as that little kick, something unexpected.
I pick grapes ripe from the vine
and scatter them like dreams
amongst the lettuce, tomatoes and carrots.
Grapes-sometimes bitter and sometimes sweet- are the dreams in the midst of the thoughts and heartbeats of our lives.
Mix all well and serve, giving hope the size of a grape to a world that often does not think or feel
or even realize it is alive.