twin offerings

A personal letter to the dead fig tree

A letter to the daughter of the deep-rooted world,

There is a tree that never learnt to speak. It only leans, ever so slightly. Fruit swells at its fingertips, but it does not open. Deep purple, liver-slick, skin taut with knowing. I gaze. I gaze. I gaze.

I have lived my life on the opposite branch. Loud red skin, thick as flesh, my ribs embedded with rubies. They tear me apart. They plunge fingers into my red. I stain. I dye tongues and fingertips. I am Persephone’s undoing—six seeds and a winter. I am the fruit that split the year. Half-life, half-death. I am bitter sweetness, crimson trap. To open me is to lose something.

But I see you on the other side of the world. The branch that hangs low. Crashing on the ground with your shriveled velvet skin. You're purple like poison. You're green like ivy. You breathe, you look like you do.

I should be flattered. I should smile and bow and be gracious like I am supposed to be. Like that crooked crown over my head vindicates me. I should let you press your leaves to the ground before me and let it tilt. But I am a fruit, a sticky tedious sick fruit. I was not hand made to rule. I was born split-lipped, bursting at the seams, trying to hold in too much—seeds, sweetness, sun.

I have lost breath at your sight. Lost my appetite. You're a slow bruise blooming, swinging from branches that were blessed to bore you. If my crown were two hands with fingers red too, I'd trace you along the borders. Carnal, sweet, and quiet. To touch you would be deciding, choosing, living but to let you fall to that death would mean sand slipping from my hands, my angels mocking me from behind my ear.

I have no god left to offer you. Only my gore. But if the gods remember you, perhaps in the cracks of your bark they remember me too. Perhaps they see in you the shadow of my crown. Perhaps they hear my name in the silence between your ripening.

Darling. You knew skin before hunger knew you. You were needed not desired. Worshipped, not ravaged. Dressed on the newest skin, milk white like pearls and red locks, you wrapped yourself around Eve. It wasn't asked of you but begged. You were there when the first human learned shame, and mourned its fullness, its nakedness.

Your ancestors were tucked into the scrolls of empires. Cleopatra dined with you on her lips, figs soaked in honey and wine. You watched kingdoms crumble over your sweetness. No blood on your hands, but sugar under your nails. You were there, always, at the center of everything, and no one dared speak your name in vain.

Aphrodite loved you best. She draped you in wine and fed you to her lovers. You are the fruit of lust made gentle. Of desire made sacred. I am the fruit of desperate thirst. Of greed and gulp and sin.

And there's something holy in the way Rome found it's founders cradled over your roots. Your fruit falling like Rome would've. You bore their weight and their future. You didn't know what you carried. Rome didn't know it's fate.

Men sat beneath you and became gods. They trespassed and became more. You're royalty. You're sacred. You do not call for knives. You grow your sugar inwards like a secret prayer. They called you womb. They called you temple. You are fig of the sacred grove, fig of the first shame, fig of fertility, fig of birth.

Death shall be kinder to you, my twin flame. I shall rot and be crushed under foreign hands but you shall succumb to your death, crashing like stars and living for an eternity. The people your fruit bore—fig of Romulus and Remus, fig of Dionysus, fig of Inanna, of Cleopatra, fig of brides and widows alike—  will gape and envy your fall. Like Icarus you will live for evermore.

Women may stain their lips with my blood but they'll always embody you. And you will embody them too. They will serve you with wine in gold-rimmed glasses. Your myth-soaked nectar will give life to thousands of thoughts— thoughts that will build empires like Rome, thoughts that shall flow in books which will never breed dust, thoughts that will make women and men lose their minds in galleries and studios. If i be the slut, you'll be the lady. One is spectacle. The other is myth. I was meant to make a mess. You were meant to be remembered. I’m a love affair. But you—you are hallowed. You ferment into holiness. You'll ripen into poetry. And the poets may kiss your softness, fig, but they stain their teeth with me. I am fruit of ruin but you're the fruit of gods. They chew for your juices but they cough up my seeds.

My crimson to your green. My crimson to your purple. My crimson to your ever changing self. You're more. More than me. More than I'll ever be. I love you like a ghost loves the line it cannot cross. I love you like Eurydice, like Lilith. Like Medea loved so hard it ruined everything.

Somewhere, there is a table set for gods and ghosts alike, and both of us rest in a bowl at its center. Conjured by the longings of poets and prophets. Soft purple skin beside jeweled red seeds. Not speaking. Not touching.

And if our trees ever grew side by side, fig and pomegranate, perhaps the earth beneath would hum. The bees would find religion in us. There would be daughters born beneath that canopy who dream of nothing but myth.

But I wrote a letter to you in June, did it reach you? I kissed it with my crown. I left my scent on it, my stain on it. Did spring carry my whispers of sweet nothing over to you?

Yours in life but never in death,

Pomegranate

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special thanks to

eyeswideshut

and to understand the whole correspondence, please read her “bury all the spikes of your crown in my milk” <3