Fig tree

The pen I used to write with and the letters I could have sent; I picked them up and I put them down Unable to live and unable to die. People dissolved in puddles of tears and memory, as I chased dreams that still haunt me. Selfish with every step I took. Selfish with every step I forgot to.

Now I could burn everything I'd earned

I could give away everything I'd learned

To get back the moments,

I didn't spend with the people I used to love dreams and ambition,

love and infatuation,

selfish choices,

practical vices; all laid down in front of me like branches of a fig tree I sit frozen unable to choose unable to live And so I have a fig in my hand. A fig of indecisiveness. A fig of chaos. But still a fig of possibility. A fig that keeps me fed; my identity intact. A fig that will yet still consume me.

"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."
													- Sylvia Plath