a poem for the end of summer
I’ve lived long enough in cities to lose the sound of a body falling apart slowly, like fruit on the branch. Not broken, but becoming. Just time doing what time was always meant to do.
Here everything breaks in staccato. A choreography of people pretending not to be running from the same end.
But back home, there’s a fig tree that splits open in August. Dark, sweet wounds offered to bees. No one cleans it up. The sugar sinks into the soil, fueling next year’s blooms.
I miss that. The honesty of rot. The kind of dying that feeds something. How yielding can be a form of continuation.
If I’m lucky, (and luck isn’t the word, but it will do) I’ll remember how to be slow again. Let the light in without photographing it. Let my body soften, like a fruit meant for something other than display.
And when I go, (because we all go) I hope I go like the fig, sweet and full, bursting at the seam, feeding whatever comes next.
