I hadn’t tasted a pear in years.
No particular reason. I’d simply forgotten them.
The taste stayed somewhere in my memory. Or perhaps just the idea of what it was supposed to taste like. A sweetness unlike any other fruit. That first bite, when the juice fills your mouth. The tiny grains in its flesh, crunching. By the end, only the stem and the seeds remain, barely enough to prove the fruit was ever there.
I took a bite.
It tasted exactly as I remembered. Maybe even better, because it was real. Sweet juice ran down my chin. Each bite made me want another. Bigger. Juicier.
Along with the taste, I tried to remember its scent.
There wasn’t one.
Usually, everything I love comes with a smell I remember just as clearly.
Not pears.
Caught completely off guard, I twirled the stem between my fingers.
In my archive of scents, there was an empty space.
Shaped like a pear.