Red Grapes and Piranhas

The mom set the large disposable plastic ware container on the table, its contents brimming with glistening violet red grapes. “Do you want one?” she offered, I took one or two, not wishing to be greedy…

Within moments they decended on the container… several children, its difficult to say how many, I could count them in my mind if I tried, but it was such a riot of arms and legs and a crush of tiny bodies pressing in around the table as hands reached in repeated from the container with an avarice unrivaled by in even the most impoverished lands. A plump little baby in his disposable diapers picked at his stem and then tried to press into the fracas. In desperation, he cried until the child’s patient mother chuckled and said “oh he wants more grapes but he can’t reach the bowl” and she deftly snapped a small amount from the stem and handed it to him. The rest of the children continued to eat unabated, lips smacking, teeth glistening, they did not talk they merely ate as one after another tiny opalescent glistening orb was shoved hungrily into their mouths.

In the end they wandered away and not even a grape remained. The mother who had brought them, returned to the container and held up the remaining stem like the bones of some animal that had gotten to close to the banks of the Amazon only to be picked clean by a pack of ravenous Piranha.

© 2009 Carole Holliday