First fig

Best thing about  late summer: palpating the smooth globes  daily as they sway among the branches, watching them turn from green to brown, the swollen  skin rupturing slightly - at which point it's a fine balance between the benefit of a little more sunshine or the hazard of an insect attack.

Technically a fig is not a fruit but an outside-in flower cluster, pollinated in warmer climes by a tiny wasp that crawls inside. No wonder  these  luscious pods so much resemble internal organs or glands - enclosed, intimate, gravid.


An untidy package, all its granular guts
stuffed into a sort of beanbag. Skin
contains the seeds, holds them bottom-heavy
bellying to a slight sideways droop
from offcentre nipples. Faint vertical veins
do not succeed in corseting their shape,
their generous opulence. And the colour!
they are plush, dull purple. Washed,
a faint grey bloom vanishes, returns with dryness.
I get a knife, halve one, am shocked
by brightness - scarlet seeds in scarlet flesh,
and the rind between them and the skin
(that smoky plum-colour) is a wholly surprising
pale greenish cream, the sort of colour
that looks smooth to the touch. It is.
But a quartered fig has nothing to hold its shape,
no inner membrane, no tension
nipple to base. That point of skin,
released, lifts, and the tiny seeds begin to fall,
a few at a time, bright on the white plate.
And suddenly I'm thinking
of my own sliced skin, my own severed
breast, fallen away into a dish.

(Still Life with Figs by Joanna Boulter)