green apples and green peppers see me approaching, hovering over them deliberating on their worthiness only to watch their red counterparts be selected. i imagine their little hearts breaking as it happens time and time again, they don’t understand why they aren’t picked. i won’t accept that the produce doesn’t have a consciousness, everything does. like the red peppers and red apples feel pain when i slice them up, the green ones feel devastated that i never choose them. 

i understand their confusion. i suspect on their plastic packaged journey to the supermarket shelves they picked up that a green traffic light means to go, red means to stop. green is yes red is no. why doesn’t this apply to them? the poor souls can’t wrap their heads around it. why are they not good in their greenness? if they were taught about religion and knew how to pray, they would (and rightly so) demand answers from their higher power. but who would they pray to? a farmer? supermarket executives? those who they want to be selected by? most of them don’t understand their fate if they do get chosen. 

the green apples see distant cousins called ‘cooking apples’ be chosen day in day out. one day a granny smith tries to roll into their section, only to be moved by a uniformed human. they are also green, what’s the difference here? mr green is utterly perplexed. miss pink lady watches this unfold. she is one of the more popular of their kind and won’t associate with her green counterparts.

but what’s in an apple crumble? miss pink lady and her siblings aren’t the queen there. 

the peppers face similar rejection. the sweet pointed red romanos get picked up instantly, the more common traditional red peppers find their way into the baskets with ease. even the orange and yellow ones are inspected and deemed worthy by the basket wielders. the desperate green ones stay in their container watching this unfold. one of them notices a bag containing what appears to be pieces of red, orange, yellow, and green peppers? 

surely not, it can’t be!

he can’t figure out what this is. if mr green pepper knew the bag contained slices and dices of his kind in the depths of hypothermia, he may be more content with his fate in the temperature controlled crate. 

when they get bruised, their use by date passes or they become otherwise imperfect the  lucky ones might go to charity, or moved to the discount section. miss pink lady would rather be composted than be seen there. alas those that are unable to be used for stir fry kits, juices etc and must be destroyed. do all apples,  all peppers go to processing at the same time? do the greens get taken first thinking they are at last getting picked first? however i don’t think they even get that final indigo shaped hurrah. 

actually, no. they do get their moment of joy. they think they are finally being chosen, they get gathered, maybe all bagged up together(at last) and for a while the fruit and vegetables don’t have angst anymore, they don’t know their fate is to be shredded akin to a piece of paper. miss pink lady especially doesn’t know this, it is not a fate one would deem fit for an apple of her prestigious-adjacent standing.