My name is California.

Today, I became a ripe Avocado, and I fear something terrible is about to happen.

My life began as most lives do — as the seed of a large tree neatly planted in a row among thousands of others belonging to a major agricultural corporation. As the tree grew, so did I, until eventually my brown stump of a stem emerged and my body took on its infamously oblong contour.

In the tree, hanging above the world, I learned so much. I learned what people were, and I learned that people could be exploited for cheap labor, especially if they came from the magical sounding place called Centroamérica. Up there on my branch, I learned about the different genera of Avocados. For instance, I’m a Lamb Hass, and I happen to have a cousin who, regrettably, is an organic.

One day, I was just hanging out when I discovered that my life had an expiration date. I was going to die. When one of the exploited laborers harvested me, a searing pain tore through my not-yet-green flesh, and they placed on my skin a small sticker with words on it. Unfortunately, because I couldn’t see below my lumpy paunch, all I could make out was, “Best before.”

However, I didn’t fear the harvest. I didn’t even fear whatever came after “best before.” In fact, getting picked is a good thing! It’s a chance to get away from the family see the world. It means someone, somewhere would like to eat you, lightly salted, peppered and with a spoon, of course — as all Avocados are meant to be consumed, with few exceptions.

If someone wants to eat you, you have value, and a valuable Avocado is a nomadic one. I went from tree to hand, to basket, to hand, to truck, to cold rusty floor of truck, to hand, to cardboard box, to hand, until finally I found myself in a marvelous habitat where it was always daytime called Trader Joe’s. Trader Joe’s was truly special because it was a home not just for Avocados, but also for other vegetables like broccoli and Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

It was there, in the Trader Joe’s habitat, where I filled out my golden years. (For reference, one human day equals just under thirty-five Avocado years.) Over the course of about eighty years, I grew smarter and wiser, and my rind turned a little bit soft. I could sense my time was coming.

Many people would enter the habitat and circle our enclosure glaring first at us and then at a ubiquitous collection of two-dimensional rectangles called Bon Appétit.

Now, these people didn’t look like the exploited laborers who took great care of our families. They had flowing white hair, and skin just as white but sometimes orange, smooth and hairless, and they squeezed us with baseless scrutiny.

On many occasions, they would pick me up close to their faces and force me to take part in a performance of some kind. They’d show off these things called teeth and wild worm-like pieces of flesh called tongues. Perhaps most destructively, they’d raise an object high into the air and, without a word of consent from me, send a flash of white light tearing through the sky to blind me for a few seconds — which of course amounts to several days.

But on the day my “best before” sticker started peeling, I got picked up, squeezed, and taken to a place belonging to one of those white-orange people. Unfortunately, this place was not another Trader Joe’s habitat. It was an Avoca-Doy!, and it was a pop-up preparing for its soft launch in a city named Koreatown.

This morning, I woke up on an icy metal counter next to a pile of Bon Appétits. Curious, I rolled over and managed to lift and peruse one of them. What I witnessed terrified me. I was petrified with fear by a harbinger of the demise of my kindred — this horrible, bestial obscenity called Roasted Fig and Goat Cheese Avocado Toast.

I turned the rectangles as fast as my armless body could. It seemed every rectangle in every single Bon Appétit laid out, step by step, an abominable way to prepare us Avocados. Sun-cured and crumbled over charred brioche buns and saffron sprigs? An Egg? In my pit-hole? I’m an Avocado, dammit, not your fad meant to be turned into mush and eaten as a substitute for butter! We’re to be split, sprinkled with a dash of salt and pepper, eaten with a spoon, or — and this is the only exception — made with stone and pestle into guacamole.

You see, we Avocados have become a commodity, symbolic of a lifestyle we can’t even dream of experiencing, and I’m afraid the only way to put an end to it is a species-wide recall. But that’s only temporary. Something terrible is definitely going to happen once this pop-up opens for two hours.

I fear I am about to be served for sixteen dollars on some rustic rye bread that looks like it hurts to chew — nothing more than a gaudy cover-up. What’s my value if people don’t enjoy me? Here, lying on the cold metal guillotine, all I can do is wish. I wish I could return to my tree. I wish to return to the gentle, exploited care of the laborers, hanging out with my aunties and my cousins, never to become “Roasted Fig and Goat Cheese Avo Toastie — $16.”

I was the soft mint green mural adorning the eastern exterior wall of the Sprouts at the Wash Street corner mall. You were the sandy blonde in ripped “boy” jeans. You stopped by the other day and took over 130 pictures of yourself in front me.

I’m new to this town, so I was excited to learn this old place had some life in it. My creator birthed me six days ago, and I went unnoticed, seen as a convenient toilet or a good place to rest a weary back needing a smoke.

But then you came along cheerfully swinging your reusable Sprouts shopping bag. What was it you bought again? Ah, right, Boar’s Head Garlic Bologna. Quarter pound, sliced.

You called me beautiful. You complimented me, and I complimented your rose gold Beats By Dre. You called me perfect, and we made each other feel so. You said we matched. I’d never been anyone’s match until I met you.

Then you and I posed for 132 semi-distinguishable photographs for your Instagram. You laughed without noise. You stared longingly at that crack in the pavement. You blew a kiss to no one, though the liberty auto-insurance sign spinner thought otherwise. The one you ended up picking, the one where you twirled your hair like it was a bowl of linguine floating in dark matter, that one was special. And that’s when I fell for you.

I remember you slid your finger indecisively across the bottom of your Galaxy S7 and by extension me. You adjusted how the light played across my exposed body to reveal who I am. And what draws me to you even more, while I know you did it all with care of your followers in mind, I couldn’t help but notice you seemed to care for me, the wall.

I don’t want to presume, but I venture to guess you shared our photo with the world because hundreds of others have come and taken thousands of near carbon copies of the moment we shared not two days ago. Yet somehow, all I can think about — yes, I can think — is our moment. I’m led to think that maybe one of them will bring out my best self and adjust the color saturation like you did. They never do, and it all feels so fleeting.

They don’t appreciate my originality like you. No one spends an hour and thirty minutes in heated debate with themselves over which photo of us they should share. It’s always which photo of them. They come, they snap, they leave. Perhaps I’ve yet to arrive at the gross realization that you weren’t different.

My cousin, a cheap Shepard Ferry rip-off two blocks up, warned me of this. Said I shouldn’t get attached to the “grambots” and the “snapturds.” Maybe I’m foolhardy for not believing him, or a quixotic wall for holding onto the hope that you’ll be able to read this letter, because in my heart of hearts I know translating Stucco to English is a chore. I fear that when you decide to become fluent, some damn ad for the American Health Fund may come and take my place.

If you do learn my language in time, or at least one of its three claddings, understand this: I want you. I want every piece of you — your insecurities, your ambition. I want to feel your soft human skin on my bumpy hard composite flesh. I want to tear down this fence dividing you from me, but I don’t have hands. I want to have intercourse with you but I don’t have a urethra to carry my dusty seed. I want to sweep you off your feet and run away to Aruba, but I don’t have legs, and hell if know how to swim.

I guess, and maybe it’s just wolly — that’s wall folly — what all this boils down to is love. I love you, and if you love me like your followers love you, I’ll be here waiting patiently as the sun rises and sets — because I can’t physically sleep — until the city’s mural ordinance approves the next guy, or worse: I find out you’ve run off with a giant inflatable swan.

Hello, passing white student trying not to make eye contact! Do you have any interest in changing the current tide of discriminatory social norms? Do you like free food? How about pursuing the interests of minorities and making our country a safe and welcoming place for them to live? How about fresh, hot pizza? We understand social justice requires an extra saucy kick in the pants to get into, so riddle me this: how do two free slices of pizza and a side of buffalo wings sound?

You won’t find a deal like that at Dominoes.

Just sign our roster acknowledging that you’ll come to next Monday’s new member meeting and you can take your pick of any slice of the pizza pie you want — well, any among the pepperoni, cheese and combo options we have here. We ordered way too much! We always do! And also free of charge are the means and willpower to dutifully enact change in our communities small and large.

How does justice taste now? Like tomato, garlic and basil? I know.

Awesome. Welcome to the committee. Now that you’ve put the pen to the paper, you’re ready to put the mouth to the ‘za. So, I’ll tell you that the meeting will take place next Monday evening in Robertson Hall, room 303. If you get lost, let your hungry nostrils be your guide. Or give Lewis a call.

We’ll cover issues like solutions to housing and education discrimination as well as dignified representation of minorities in media. As if those issues aren’t intrinsically valuable enough for you to attend, then let us entice you with more glorious food.

The Social Justice Committee always provides donuts, ice cream, pound cakes, cream puffs, Twinkies, Ding Dongs and malt balls, and our very own Italian immigrant Matteo has his Nona ship her famous bruttiboni from Prato every week to keep your sweet, socially conscious bellies satiated. But don’t burst your buttons just yet. Get this: at all of our meetings we discuss one major issue affecting the globe that week.

We encourage you to bring some treats to share, but we know you won’t, which is why we guarantee there is always plenty, and always so much left over. That’s how we get ya!

Twice a semester, we hold two major fundraising events that center on the cultivation of intercultural relationships. We invite the diverse members of our campus to mingle, get to know each other, grab a quick couple lobster rolls, and hopefully develop a more connected understanding of themselves and their neighbor.

If establishing budding relationships with the marginalized is simply not enough to get you on board, have no fear, because Cheesy Chuck’s Grilled Cheese Truck is here. Our pal Chucky Boy has been catering our events for the past two years because, like us, he’s an advocate for social change. Because of his advocacy and love of large profit margins, he’s dedicated to helping you and students like you get fully on board with tackling (your appetite) our country’s most pressing issues.

Now we’re speaking you’re language, huh? Not only are you in a bubble, you’re still on the bubble when it comes to the whole helping others thing. We get that. Look, all 22 members of our committee were like you at one point or another. Even if we are using service as a way to save money on food, we’re still serving. All it took for us to come around were weeks of catered meetings, hundreds of dollars worth of free pizza, and a semiannual food truck parade. After that we got to work. So what the heck are you waiting for besides being on the right side of history? Our fried chicken Fridays? We can’t wait either.

I can already see your heart growing full. It swells with compassion, and your arteries clog with cholesterol. I can tell that you’ll make a great member of our committee. Between your appetite for a good, hot, free slice and your lukewarm interest in helping solve major socially degrading issues, you’re exactly what we’re looking for. Remember, real change starts with you, me, and Pizza Hut. But we can get Dominoes, or something more local, like Vinny’s, which is up the street.