THE FIG TREE

POETRY Megan Rilkoff

We decide you will keep the cat when I leave. Snow falls in Tokyo, the streets filling with white ash. Your father wakes early for the last time. We both leave, separately. Me to Maine, you to Arizona. We crave coasts and deserts. In my hometown, the figs are budding, readying themselves for the picking. A child plucks a dandelion, pushes his tiny fist past rows of Chiclet teeth. In sleep, we lay like two fallen petals, my chest cupping your back. Or we both leave. Together. Move back home to Massachusetts, next to your parents. Spend our days trying not to become them as teenage lovers lean in for a teeth-clanging kiss. Children stare out school bus windows, picking at the seams of broken seats. They dare fill their mouths with cottony filling when they think no one is looking. Or we both stay. Neither of us wants the final word. I sleep well in foreign beds,

corners tucked in by a stranger who was preparing for me, or any body, to arrive. The figs ripen and fall. The figs wrinkle and go black.