November Winner, DiCamillo: Level II

A freshly picked strawberry sits on my hard wood table next to my flickering lantern on a dreary autumn day. Its blood red outer skin begs to be devoured. Freshly washed seeds cover the strawberry like topazes glittering in the lantern light. A miniature forest resides on the strawberry's top, like a crown of lush, green, leafs.

The strawberry's skin is smooth as glass and gleams in the light of the lantern. Its leafy crown is soft and fuzzy, almost exactly like a tissue, fallen out of its box. Its seeds are rough, like grains of sand, pasted onto the ruby like fruit with sugar.

I pick the heart shaped fruit up. At first, the bright red berry seems scentless; though soon I begin to identify a subtle scent. Very few words could be used to describe the strawberry's scent. The only words that would accurately describe it would be; it smells like strawberry.

I can no longer resist the urge to taste the strawberry's bright red flesh. I bite into the plump, red fruit. It seems, as though, when I bite into the berry, an explosion of intense flavor begins in my mouth. Juices, both as sweet as sugarcane, and as sour as citrus fruit, fill my mouth. Every time I chomp down on the marvelous fruit, a miniature wave of flavor crashes against my throat.

Suddenly, a lovely sensation fills my body like hot chocolate fills my thermos on a snowy winter day. Though it is a chilly, late autumn day in Oregon, I feel like I am sitting in the sand of a warm tropical island. As I swallow the last morsel of strawberry, joy begins to swallow me like a cocoon. I look outside to see that the sun has broken free of the cloud cover, or at least I see it that way.