CW: violence, death or dying, blood, bodily fluids, bodily harm.
Weirdly, I really did pretend juice from fruit canned by my mom was spoonfuls of delicious cough syrup, and one day in elementary school, I really did earn a punch in the arm from choking and coughing juice all over my friends in the cafeteria. From that seed, I branched off over many revisions of this poem to include my fears of isolation, aging, dementia, and plants erupting out of my body.
Mother would point out the window at the orchard
while she squeezed fruit, prepared the water bath
canner, and washed and dried Mason jars and lids
for her annual canning. This is how we take measure of our bounty
she would say, her fingers tutting already, her lips forming
her incantations of preparation, sugar, and future. She stored
in the cellar the fruit in syrup in sealed jars, ready to pop open
with a sweet hiss. The swollen fruit was delicious, every spoonful
of juice the best medicine, though, one time I choked,
spit my medicine all over my friends in the cafeteria at school.
They were repulsed and angry. One of them punched me
in my arm. I tried to catch my breath, to hold back the panic
as my friend rooted where he sat, one seed among many.
I lamely muttered my mother’s spells with the taste of apricot
still on my tongue, but my friend seized and sprouted
branches bare-limbed and ghastly yellow from his ruined throat.
I flexed my fingers by rote in the gestures she taught me
season after season, but I was too quiet. I raised my shameful voice
to a shout. The abatement spell, the apology spell, the fire spell
to reduce invading branches to ash. She had warned me in her teachings
to prepare for the worst. And you are still not done. You must shout the spells
for pulling the malignancy out of victims. Out of the air. The spell for cleansing.
The spell of healing. The spell for calming. The spell for forgetting.
The spell of supplication, because what you’ve committed is murder,
and trees will not forget, though the people might, once your spells are done.
And you are still not done. Eat the remaining fruit quickly. Pour the juice
down your throat. The spell for concealing. The spell for protection.
The spell for forgiveness. Remember the contract. Remind the sudden seeds
no one else will tend to them but you. She had warned me the trees’
last screams would linger in my ears for decades to come, wrinkle
and grow stone in my brain, spread cyanide along my thoughts,
twig confusion until I vomited and grew weak, wandered
out of the kitchen through the back door of our family home
for generations, and out into the orchard. The land we stole
exacts a terrible price for our crimes, Mother said, but she also said
we were born for this land. Something in us goes all the way back
to the bargain between civilization and wilderness, long before our theft
and punishment. These decades have taken their toll. Memories
spark of canning, an accident in a cafeteria, protection
spells I’ve muttered for years to hold me here this long
but memory fails, and with the phantom taste of apricot
on my tongue, the trees scream, orchard of rage and pact.
I’ve lived a long life. I’ve lived by the fruit, our only treatment
the only reason for the trees and orchard, our prison, the only place
we can live these long, healthy lives we deserve. At the bitter end,
while memories unfurl and fade, I collapse finally onto the rich soil
the new tree firmly rooted and standing tall from my exploded skull
body turned to fertilizer while my tongue talks last to the dirt
(Did I leave anyone to tend to the orchard? Did I teach someone, too?)
infernal medicine leaking to water the half-starved roots.
