Figs are the house next door that will be torn down soon for an apartment block, but until that happens I will keep sneaking
Perfume
into the yard and cutting fig leaves to bring home and perfume my apartment. That scent of fig trees is so alluring that I’ve walked far off my path searching for a tree I knew must be there. The memories of hot fruit in late summer tasting of wasps as much as honey tastes of bees.
Jasmine is the smell of seduction and evolution. Almost too ripe to bear and impossible to leave. Jasmine tea is the taste of love - that is what I told my mentor who became a pastor to perform my wedding ceremony. We served jasmine tea before I walked down the aisle, where we stood under an arbor of jasmine woven into the bamboo already growing at that end of the courtyard.
Rosemary is what the gypsy women at the foot of the Alhambra handed me as I ate cactus pears, promising, ‘Two children, a boy and a girl.’
Hibiscus is my home. Cleopatra drank hibiscus tea for beauty and for luxury in the desert. Durga claims them as hers, reclining, holding all the cards. Hibiscus is why my heart will live forever.
