Rapunzel’s mother experienced lettuce love and look where it got her. In this shortest of stories, author Trista Wilson’s protagonist has a narrow escape in the produce section.
She fell deeply, madly, inexplicably in love with the head of lettuce. It sat there so unobtrusively under the grocery store lights, bathed in a fine mist of shining water. She wasn’t even looking for love, but it found her, right there in the produce section, musak providing the soundtrack. The pale green leaves glowing like harbingers of better things to come. Even the name Iceberg filled her with a sense of wonder, of hope for new and exciting adventures. She reached forward slowly but another hand was faster and as she watched the lettuce leave her, cradled in the arms of another, she tried to convince herself it was for the best. Her mother certainly wouldn’t have approved and what would they have raised their children as, people or produce? The lettuce probably would have let her down like so many others, staying out late with friends and not even texting. But no, try as she might to convince herself otherwise, heartbreak still found her, right there in the produce section.
Trista Wilson, author of Sometimes Brave, usually loves writing for kids but during the pandemic funnelled her feelings into some poetry and prose for adults. She enjoys writing about strange and sometimes dark subjects tempered with a sense of humour. Price Right was first published in the Popshot Magazine The Intimacy Issue, Spring 2021.
