'Still Life with Aging Fruit' by Thad DeVassie

Silently they sat, patient and awkward with their red-dotted freckles and crooked hat stems, revealing small hints of growing old: some discoloration here, a bit of mold there, a slight turn toward the mealy – produce equivalents of bedsores. Long after things felt juicy and alive, neither the pears nor grapes saw it coming: an abandoned canvas, a disheveled chambermaid, her petite paring knife. A scene so ripe for possibility, for immortality, only to be snuffed out along with the candle’s last burn.