By Meredith Lang
An old cowboy, rough as the rocky ground and angled as a fence post, roughened by the range he used to ride, runs his knobbed fingers down the deep creases of his face, traces the canyon lines of his hands that shakes as he handles the figs his wife has bought, unlike in their surface from rope and reins; he cannot fathom that one would eat as strange a fruit as figs whose sensual shape, smooth and rounded, evokes a forbidden femininity, inside the female flower, with seeds of fruit and life; The cowboy did not know these things in the masculine solitude of desert and plain, did not know these things that his wife once contained therein, in the feminine closeness of forest and glen; could not see the intimate seeds of the fig growing in the forest through the vastness of the desert; at one time had desert and plain left their seclusion to enter forest and glen, then the fig would have been known by its seeds; time wears all things out, and assigns all things their place; he did not learn to know the fig then, and he still does not know it now. So, these figs, strange to him as they sit in their bowl, as misplaced as he in this kitchen, gleaming counters and cupboards; he cuts open the fig, the inside opens suggestively, red seeds pulsing, juice on his hands, the gleaming counter; he hides his shudder from his wife, as she chides him, leaning over to gather the broken fruit, the roundness of her breasts and the fruits and the knowledge of lost things were caught uncomfortably in the light from the window that allowed runaway beams from the sun rising over the ridge.
Meredith Lang is from Rixford, Pennsylvania and now lives one county over in Roulette. She majored in special education and literacy and still works in the field of education. She enjoys writing (surprise!), yoga and fitness, photography, cooking, and plucking strings on her banjo and mandolin. More of her writing can be found on her blog, Minor Thoughts, as well as other literary journals and blogs. She can also be found lurking on Twitter and Facebook.