Stephanie Graber
Mrs. Moe
Writing 121
13 December 2004
Desert Vegetation and a Sun Dried Tomato
I was trying to describe you to someone a few days ago. You’re not like any guy I’ve ever known.
I couldn’t say: “He’s just like Clay Aiken except he can’t sing, that is, Clay can’t actually sing either; he’s much girlier, if possible; and much uglier, if possible.”
I couldn’t say that because you don’t look like Clay Aiken at all. Though, I must say, you and he both have questionable gay tendencies.
I finally ended up describing you as the desert. Beside the fact that you are dry, boring, and if someone is around you for too long they feel like they just want to shrivel up and die, I used the common cactus.
Imagine for a moment that you are walking through the desert. Your eyes are frying out of the sockets, your flesh is melting from your bones, and your limbs begin to slowly detach from your dry, stump some would call a body. But what is that in the distance? A cactus: the only green thing you’ve seen for as far back as your fried mind can remember. You’re the cactus and I’m the sun-dried tomato stumbling through the desert.
Like a cactus in a desert, you seemed like a nice guy, but when I got to know you I found out that you were nothing but a prick. A cactus in the desert can look very welcoming to someone like me, on the brink of drying up like a raisin. So I approached the plant. It stood tall in the desert as though controlling it with it’s feeling of safety and comfort. This feeling eventually overcame me and I had to investigate. Your insecurity, immaturity, and neediness: the thorns of the cactus. You tried to stand tall and control all, but you never let go of the thorns. You hid behind them and used them to deflect me. I just wanted the comfort I saw from a distance.
In the end, I gave up. I was tired of fighting to get past the thorns. Too many wounds, too much blood; after so many mistakes I realized, you were never worth it. I was tired of the pain. So I left the cactus and hoped to never run into one again.
That is what you’re like to me.