Single

All love is in great part affliction.
--Marilynne Robinson

Bruised, misshapen, piteous, what an extravagant array of flaws describe those last unselected fruit in an emptying bin among the detritus left behind by those selected, desiccated leaves and stems, crushed and oozing victims of the selection process or of their transit to market slouched weeping in a corner.

Passed over, suggesting only by aggregation in isolated undisturbed curves and stretches of incongruous health their betters now exhausted: skin red almost to bleeding, muscular with preserving their vulnerable perfection, the implication of rich aromatic interiors.

And will a hand pause among the remainder, hovering equivocation, to weigh sustenance against displeasure? Will it grasp, gingerly weighing and squeezing, or opt for another ingredient entirely, abandoning premise and conclusion altogether in favor of a fresh argument?

Self-pity's jaundiced murmuring: You dawdled, came too late, will to your bed hungry; or, Softened and pregnable, unpalatable, you are ill with rough handling.

Or another facile metaphor in waiting, perhaps.