by Diyah Pinckney

There was a farmer tending his field when he noticed a different fruit had grown. He picked it up, looked at it, and then bit in to it. The bitter taste of it shocked him so much that he dropped it on the ground causing more seeds from this fruit to spread out. The farmer noticed that he dropped it but went about tending the rest of his field. During the next harvest, to his surprise more of that same fruit had grown. He also noticed that his other produced had lessoned and the ones that did grow did not look the same. This made the farmer very upset. He did not understand where this fruit came from, why it came back or why it multiplied. He became so angry that he picked up the fruit and squished with his hands leaving more seeds to drip on the fertile ground and he stepped on the rest. As he continued to tend the rest of field, when he found one of these fruits, he would throw it causing it to splatter when it hit the ground in another area of his field. In the following harvest, the farmer was shocked. All his produced was gone. Replaced by this fruit. All his hard work was destroyed. This fruit had multiplied so greatly that it sucked all the fertility out of the soil, leaving his field worthless.