Inspired  by Bonnie Neubauer’s Write Brain Workbook and a summertime trip to the Magic Wings Butterfly conservatory in Deerfield, Massachusetts. The prompt is as follows:

Think about a banana, the feel/smell/taste/color. Write three memories/impressions that come to mind and use them in a story that starts “he was a really nice guy” My impressions were 1) brown 2)shriveled and 3) mushy (all the reasons I won’t eat a banana!). The result was this little piece.

Melvin

He was a really nice guy, but Melvin had one trait I just couldnt’ stomach. He was obsessed with bananas. What’s wrong with that, you ask. Bananas are healthy. Well yes, they are, but not the way he consumes them. He won’t touch one unless it’s brown, shriveled and mushy. Whoever heard of eating rotten bananas? Melvin eats them morning and night, until he’s drunk on the fermented sugar. You don’t want to see him when he’s drunk. It’s not pretty. I tried a banana once, just to be polite but one sip nearly knocked me out. I tried to talk him into something different, a hibiscus blossom perhaps, but to no avail. Melvin loved bananas more than he loved me, so I left him for Frederico. Freddie may be foreign but he eats milkweed, so at least he’s normal.