My fingertips began to prune as I spent the hottest hours hanging 

laundry from the clothes line-- 

heavy linens, lemon colored sheets.

On the balcony, I lean into some lonely prayer 

against the lip of outside. 

My skin burning and anticipating 

an abundance of fruit and horror, God speak.

Flesh left to dry along the saturated year 

maturity and its budrotting flower: fear.

Bring forth the fruit and say “What of this, dear Ima?

I don't know what to make of this land”

Will she soothe me? Or remind me the Lord is of hard grit?

These days I do the soothing. 

There were years before this, 

when the wine was not so noxious. 

When the fruit of time’s waxed wood cellar

fermented to the ideal of liberation.

The libations of fetal fluids are the sweetest, 

whispers the wasp to her chosen fig

Her external womb grows bloated on the branch, 

overripe mother hung in hospice.

Born in a fig, on a hike, overlooking cloud fields, 

sports bra sweaty, wet behind the ears.

Lusting for some ancient youth, a candle-lit cave

my burnt-to-browning padded thighs mark the

death of the moment and the birth of a memory, a grave

I crave those days of believing in the 

bright blazing glory of some messianic juncture,

heaven on the horizon,

the religious realm I was told was timeless.

Yet bound were our arms, our honor and wombs.

I refuse to crawl into saccharine sacrifice of motherhood--

die nested-- when sting-purpose rings in my being.

The fig tree sings into the evening and 

all that burned blue had faded then died. 

In the dusk hours of a sated summer, 

in resonant notes of maudlin nostalgia,

in the hum of the starting summer,

let my womb ache for the young mother I didn't become;

eat one fig off my index, eat another from my thumb.