Every melon tells a story.

Was it plucked from the vine too soon? Or left to linger too long in the weeds? Does it carry the battle scars of youth into its plump old age or is its wizened skin pocked with fresh victories?

Our job, as those who carve the melon, is to slice away those scars. With each stroke of our knife we carve away another distortion, another half-truth, another falsehood from the melon’s purest essence, which awaits us at the fruit’s core. There, in fleshy pink, is the melon’s central core; the truth of its melonness.

It survives there not in defiance of its stories, but in celebration of them.

This is why we carve, my child. This is why we carve.