It is thought that the first cultivated food was a fig. Radiocarbon dating places it around 11,400 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia.
11,400 years ago, you pull the first fig from the tree and hand it to me - a small bird caught between your cupped palms.
Tenderly, I tear it open. The sweetness of it leaks down over my bare shins. Together, we watch it drip, spellbound, the soul of it bleeding out, feeding the earth.
I hold it in my mouth until it dissolves. The taste lingering.
Flowers bloom there, beneath our feet. They crack open the earth, sharp and delicate, sucking life out of the soul we both shared.
For many years, we tend it - this piece of earth. Flowers bloom and die and bloom and die and bloom until the earth grows so big that it swallows you whole.
I had forgotten; the price paid for love.
I wake and go for a long walk before the small birds can stop me.
I wonder the cracks and folds of the earth.
I see things so beautiful that my mind cannot hold them; these things are not meant to be held, they are meant only to be free.
I see things so painful that my mind cannot let them go; these things have no home but the ones we create for them.
In my mouth, the taste lingers, calling me back.
I had forgotten; the price paid for freedom.
I board a bus and pay the driver the price for forgetting.
I ride it to the point where the mountains end.
Here, the birds stop me.
Here, the plants do not know my name.
Here, for a while, I lose myself.
Picture a desert; a horizon so long it ceases to exist. It is peaceful here, at the end of all things. Yet, even peace gets lonely when the plants cannot call its name.
I had forgotten; there is not much to a life other than love felt and no longer felt, and even at the end of all things,
love does not end.
The taste of the fig blooms in my mouth. I hear the small bird call my name. Now begins the work of remembering.
A joy to write for Les Cassettes. Thank you.
I will always share this fig with you.