Mom’s got this big banana that she never eats. She bought it at a convenience store while filling the car up with gas and somehow formed an attachment to it. There was nothing special about that banana. It was yellow, as it should have been, adorned well with one of those nice little stickers that you always forget to peel off. Chiquita, baby. But she held it in her hand for a while and stared at it as she hopped back into the car, just focused on this banana as if it were a weapon that could change her world in a split second of time. Maybe its sheer simplicity was what perplexed her, the way it had been seemingly untouched, obviously uneaten. The way it was the same banana that had existed for thousands of years. Not different in the least. She brought it home and wrapped it in aluminum foil. I stood by her side, patiently waiting for her to speak. What on earth was she doing, with this passionless piece of fruit in her hands? But she worked until she was finished. She threw the creation in an old shoe box and taped the edges down over the grainy brown surface, wiping a handful of imaginary sweat off of her forehead and patting the top of the box as if it were the coffin of a dead pet. She exhaled. Whew. All her worries gone. But she didn’t bury the coffin. She shoved it far under her bed and never looked at it again. I have never forgotten that it was there. I know she hasn’t, either.