Notes From My Fruit

Notes From My Fruit

About a year ago, I started noticing something a little odd going on at work.

I usually bring an apple, pear or nectarine with me to work each day, put it in my drawer and have it as a snack or with my lunch. On occasion I do not get around to eating it. When this happens, I leave the fruit in the drawer in my station for the next day that I work.

One day, after having two days off, I opened my drawer to find not only my apple, but a note, written from the perspective of said apple.

"Please eat me.

Today is my turn.

OK Because here is too hard,

want to die, not in this drawer."

Apparently my apple (or my coworker Jas) felt that I should be eating my fruit each day, not leaving it abandoned in the drawer. I started leaving notes in return.

The following is an example of one of the notes I helped a fruit write, penned days after Jas left a note pleading for an assisted fruiticide on behalf of the previous nectarine which I had left there.

"Dear Jas,

My name is Nessie Nectarine. I think you may have known my beloved husband Nectar Nectarine who was tragically taken from this world on Monday at lunchtime. I hear that he went out in style with a bowl full of blackberries and is now awaiting me in the great fruit bowl in the sky. Please help me join him there by eating me and letting me end this lonely existence without him.

Thank-you for your help,

~ Nessie Nectarine"

Some of the notes would be begging the other person to eat the nearby fruit, others were to notify one that the other had eaten the now missing fruit - still from the perspective of the fruit, moments before it was devoured. Some of the notes were even from a fruit left in replacement of the original eaten fruit, mourning the loss of a friend, usually expressing suicidal (fruiticidal?) tendencies.

I wish I'd taken pictures of all of the notes, but only got the two above. The notes from our fruit went on for several months, and would likely still be appearing in the drawer if Jas hadn't gotten into a car accident and gone on medical leave. I'm sure that as soon as she returns, my fruit will begin leaving me notes again.