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143 f r o m g o u r d s e e d f r i e d g r e e n t o m a t o s a n d w i c h e s They may not go back to their marriages. Tonight they’re frying slices of green tomato in the dorm room. They don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m just passing through this six-week summer program for honors students, two days and I’m gone. These two new lovers are teachers for the whole month and a half, with two weeks to go. They are finicky about the heat on the electric frying pan. She slices the green tomato toward her with the paring knife. He does the flipflop of the flouring. I put a thin layer of mayonnaise on the whole wheat and arrange the lettuce leaves, happy enough not to have love problems. I love them both. Let green tomatoes stand for innocence. The frying pan for how much they want this love they have now, longer. Though everything stands for that, to them. Then who am I over here with my knife in the mayo, hungry as anybody else? No woman fixes supper with me regularly. May be I should worry more about that than I do. She is here, I tell myself, but unseen, unmet, as yet. I’m no priestly bachelor, for God’s sake. Though I do honor the calm, sweet light around these two, I don’t long to be in love again, their kind, but I do long for love to fill me. I can’t explain 144 f r o m g o u r d s e e d what kind. I help them fix and eat their strange green sandwiches and feel like I can wait less restlessly now that I have been here with them, doing this. ...

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