[A woman, Michal, sits on stage with a pile of figs
\nwhich, during the course of the play, she slices.]<\/p>\n
[at first glowingly]<\/p>\n
It was to be wrapped
\nTo be carried off.
\nBe encumbered.
\nBe wound
\nlike bed sheets.
\nSurrounded.
\nBound.
\nBlind.<\/p>\n
[pause. slicing.]<\/p>\n
As fruit go,
\nthe fig is unique.
\nMost fruit are formed by the plant\u2019s
\nplacenta. The fig however is made-up
\nof dozens of tiny flowers grown together,
\ninto one another.
\nThis is called inflorescence.<\/p>\n
It means there are flowers
\ninside the fruit. Makes them
\ndifficult to pollinate. Were it not
\nfor the fig wasp<\/p>\n
who lays her eggs inside the fig,
\nso that their lives begin
\nwithin the fruit<\/p>\n
surrounded by darkness,
\nsweetness.<\/p>\n
The males
\nare born practically without eyes
\nwithout wings, and are capable of little
\nother than mating
\nand chewing through
\nthe flesh of the fig
\nso the females may escape.<\/p>\n
It has been called
\n\u201cthe most complicated and remarkable example of male inequity\u201d<\/p>\n
[pause. fruit.]<\/p>\n
What first put me in David\u2019s hands?<\/p>\n
Well. Love. Yes.
\nAnd beauty. Yes.
\nAnd music. Certainly music.
\nAnd dance. The way he danced.
\nThe way we danced.<\/p>\n
You may have read about my husband.
\nYou may have read about
\nhis love life.<\/p>\n
Back then all of Israel knew how successful a soldier he was:<\/p>\n
Saul has slain his thousands
\nDavid his myriad<\/p>\n
But anyone who met him thought of
\nhis music, and his dance,
\nand his body.<\/p>\n
When I met him he sang,
\nso beautifully,
\npeople tried to write down
\nhis songs as he sang,
\nso they could remember them.
\nRemember him.<\/p>\n
But later when they looked
\nback at their notes, they made no sense.
\nNo one could capture what they\u2019d heard
\nand seen. No one could capture
\nhim at all.<\/p>\n
We met on my fifteenth birthday
\nwe danced. He
\npressed me to him
\ncalled me \u201cmy eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said, \u201cYes my eyes.
\nShall we dance,
\nmy eyes\u201d
\nHe said I was beautiful
\nand essential.<\/p>\n
He breathed in my hair
\nI smelled him.
\nSmelled like him.
\nI lay my mouth on his neck.<\/p>\n
Later, he snuck into my chamber
\nand in darkness
\nas the sheets wrapped around us he
\nwhispered to me, his voice
\nsweet but so low
\nI couldn\u2019t understand him
\nbut it sounded like:
\nMistake.<\/p>\n
[cutting. industriously now.]<\/p>\n
It was even written,
\nwritten,
\n\u201cMichal
\nSaul’s daughter
\nloved him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Within a month we were married
\nwithin a moment,
\nwithin a bridesprice,<\/p>\n
the day was hot and dizzy.
\nI was, after all a princess,
\nand say what you will about a monarchy,
\nthey know celebrations –<\/p>\n
– lasted deep into the night
\nbeautiful, until
\nafter the meal, my brother
\nJonathan took me aside
\ntold me father
\nplanned on killing my new husband.
\nSaid it was jealousy.<\/p>\n
What could I do? I was bound.<\/p>\n
I told David to flee.
\nAnd he fled.<\/p>\n
I took a wooden statue to my
\nwedding bed, as my groom slinked
\nout of town.<\/p>\n
In the middle of the night
\nthugs broke down my door
\nand stabbed the statue repeatedly.<\/p>\n
The next day I tunneled out
\nfrom my sheets covered
\nin sawdust and so
\nin sawdust I waited
\nfor David.<\/p>\n
[remembers the pile of figs.]<\/p>\n
Nothing from David.
\nI could understand this, I suppose,
\nbut still, I hoped
\na note would come
\nsmuggled by some confidant
\nrolled-up into some servant\u2019s hat,
\nor baked into my dessert.
\nSome sign that he was out there
\nthinking of me.<\/p>\n
Instead I sat in my chamber
\nwatching the courtyard
\nthrough the window.<\/p>\n
Until, after five years of this,
\ncontrol of me
\nwent back to my father,
\nthe marriage was annulled and for fear
\nof missing a dower, father
\nmarried me off to a man I\u2019d never met.
\nHis name was Palti.<\/p>\n
Palti had a farm outside Bahrim,
\nfig orchard, some goats, quite a shock
\nfor a princess
\nbut that\u2019s what a girl gets
\nfor saving her husband\u2019s life.<\/p>\n
Life was slow and small.
\nI began to worry David
\nmight be looking for me
\nback at home.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when I started
\nwriting letters.<\/p>\n
May 24th,
\nDear David,
\nToday is our anniversary.<\/p>\n
Today the fig wasps began emerging
\nfrom the Smyrna figs, soaked in juice and pollen.
\nWasps understand how a flower
\ncan grow inside
\na fruit.<\/p>\n
May 25th
\nDavid,<\/p>\n
A doe-goat gave birth. The umbilical
\nchord wrapped the kid\u2019s neck
\nand my husband Palti
\nsaved it just in time.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s a good man,
\ndon\u2019t worry.<\/p>\n
May 26th
\nDavid,<\/p>\n
The fig wasps continue.
\nFlowers can live inside the fruit
\nlong after it\u2019s been picked.<\/p>\n
So can
\nwasps.<\/p>\n
May 27th
\nMy sweet,<\/p>\n
From complications
\nthe kid died.
\nThe doe survived,
\nbut has lost any
\ndesire to live.<\/p>\n
Fig wasps continue.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t know
\nhow to address the letters.
\nI\u2019d still heard nothing from David.
\nI just wrote David on the envelopes
\nand would give a packet of them
\nwhenever a messenger came by.<\/p>\n
I lived on the farm for ten years.
\nSlowly, I wrote fewer and fewer
\nletters. Slowly I became more
\nsettled at the farm.<\/p>\n
Palti was a good man.
\nHe was patient and kind,
\nnever forced his will,
\nnever forced himself
\non me. Slowly I developed
\na happiness there,
\na kind of amiable
\nlove for my trees,
\nfor Palti,
\nfor my life.<\/p>\n
Of course, you become content
\nwhen your desires are bound by
\nwhat you have.<\/p>\n
I had a fig orchard.
\nAnd that was enough.
\nReally, I was happy.<\/p>\n
On a summer afternoon, pruning
\nthe fig branches in the orchard
\nI ran into my brother.
\nThis was a surprise to me.
\nHe lived hundreds of miles away.
\nFurthermore, he said David was King
\nof all Israel
\nand wanted his bride back.
\nThis was a worse surprise.<\/p>\n
And then came an even worse surprise:
\nmy heart leapt.
\nI was thrilled.<\/p>\n
It was like my wedding day had
\nsimply been paused
\nfor fifteen years and I felt dizzy again,
\nspun,
\ncould taste his
\nneck on my lips.<\/p>\n
Jonathan and I left straight away
\nfrom the orchard
\nI didn\u2019t even say goodbye to Palti.<\/p>\n
What could I have said?<\/p>\n
Still, we saw Palti following us
\ntowards Bahrim. Jonathan sent some thugs
\nto beat him up.<\/p>\n
When I got to Jerusalem they took me
\nto a guest room. What did I expect?
\nFrom the window of the room
\nwas the courtyard. Summer evening.
\nDust and smoke from lamb cooking
\nmoving in the purple light. I opened
\nthe window and for a long
\ntime I sat and watched
\nmy new home.<\/p>\n
I could see the entryway
\nto the city and just at sunset it erupted
\nwith a procession as if on cue,
\npeople swarmed and something
\nhappened between
\na riot and a celebration.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t understand
\nand in the middle was a man
\ndancing, having lost all control,
\ndancing naked.<\/p>\n
I can tell you
\nafter fifteen years I hadn\u2019t forgotten
\nhow his body moved, nor,
\nmight I add, had age.<\/p>\n
That was my husband.<\/p>\n
All of Jerusalem around him,
\ndancing
\nhe\u2019s dancing,
\nnaked,
\nsmiling,
\nnaked,
\nhis balls in his hand<\/p>\n
and there are women,
\nold women,
\npeasant women,
\nthronging him<\/p>\n
and he\u2019s smiling<\/p>\n
and trailing behind him
\na bevy of other women wearing
\nthe clothing of wives
\nand I know they\u2019re his wives<\/p>\n
and I\u2019m one of them.<\/p>\n
It was written
\nabout this,
\nabout me:<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd she detested him
\nin her heart.\u201d<\/p>\n
[the fruit is a mess.]<\/p>\n
For how much change
\ncan time be responsible?
\nIt is to be
\nthrown to the ground.
\nTo become the earth.
\nBe planted.
\nBe buried.
\nHe buried me.
\nPlanted me to bear fruit.
\nIn fruit.
\nMy anger:
\neyeless
\nwingless
\nblinded and bound
\nencumbered by flesh
\nand myself
\ntunneling out.
\nAs love could
\nflower inward,
\nto make fruit
\nto breed wasps,
\nto tunnel outward.
\nTo flourish,
\nwith flower,
\nand wasp within,
\nwithout bearing,
\nwithout him.<\/p>\n
Dave Snyder<\/strong> is a poet and gardener from Chicago. His writing has appeared in journals such as The Iowa Review, Sentence: A Journal Of Prose Poetics and Seneca Review, and has been performed at the Rhinoceros Theater Festival and PAC\/Edge Festival. More work can be found here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [A woman, Michal, sits on stage with a pile of figs which, during the course of the play, she slices.] [at first glowingly] It was to be wrapped To be carried off. Be encumbered. Be wound like bed sheets. Surrounded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":384,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[22190],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1068"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/384"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1068"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1068\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2273,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1068\/revisions\/2273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}