three

When he called me his fatetwin I swallowed that sugary cordial threw back my head and took it all at once, feeling its unnatural burn in my belly. But he was only half right. Fate, yes that much was true, it was my destiny, to be damaged, ruined, pulled down to my well-built foundations by our love, but he was never my twin. He was a wolf in my chicken coop, matted in feathers and dried blood. He was a serpent in my orchard. On the day he found me I was slumbering lazily in the grass, fallen fruits fermenting in the sun beside me and lending fragrance to the air, opulence, and repose: a halo of bees buzzing around my curls. He slithered my way, on his gorgeous belly. He handed me the unknown fruit: a fantastic amalgam one bite like pomegranate, the next avocado, and then later; fig. Instead of wondering: 'who is this magician?' I wondered foolishly: ‘Why have I never seen this fruit in the orchard before?’ When he said twin he must have been pondering his own dual nature, hinted at in the two slippery prongs of his forked tongue the bifurcated segments of his own cloven hooves. Split things are suspect, and I knew better. When he said twin I should have sensed the good man and the wicked battling under his lush skin, these were the only twins that mattered. Whatever his meaning, the word had nothing to do with me. But he was beautiful. Golden, as if he’d slept in the arms of the sun. Eyes as green as the sea before the sun has burned the morning fog away. I listened to the lulling ssssssss of that tongue and heard things I had never expected to hear and with this, futures I had never desired before became unnaturally attractive. He pranced like a faun on unsteady legs and under the spell of his fruit, I saw elegance where really there was nothing but awkwardness. He called me his sisterbride and my cheeks flushed like the maidens in a Waterhouse painting. He told me we were tall stalks growing wild and I bent with the wind that he filtered through the reeds of his Pan pipes. (Why didn’t I hear it when the other song, the one written on the wind repeated: King Midas has donkey’s ears, King Midas has donkey’s ears ?) He was the yin to my yang but only in the basest locations. Where I was lightness, he was weight; where I was clean he was filthy. Where I was kind he was cruel. How he hid these truths from me, it is impossible to say. No, I lie, even now, even just speaking of him I oppose my true nature, everyone knows I never lie, but here I am deceiving. He was the yin to my yang, but it was righteous while it lasted. I am so tempted to say that it was never good and that I was tricked, but I know I was fooled only because I chose to let the snake bind me with his lies. He was logic to mate my mad emotion, fact to stud my unkempt fiction. He was honey and wine where I was bread and water. He was the husband who took my faith and spun from it wisdom. In the end all the beautiful lies he fed me in the guise of mysterious fruits with soft seeds and pits, have bedded in my fertile heart. I have learned more from the hissing of a snake than from all the other creatures of the world combined. This brothergroom thought to steal the deed to my orchard. This fatetwin wanted to see me buried under the tangled roots of his tree, but instead, while he rested, I stole the keys to the shed where he kept the ax. I hid the tool in a patch of brambles and waited. And when the time did come I cut down all the trees and set them on fire. He slipped about on the dry grass and hissed at the stars. I snuck away, with a tear on my cheek and an aching calm in my heart. You see: I’d been collecting the seeds from all the fruits of my orchard for years. I had sewn into in the smallest pocket of crimson velvet and I carried them with me into the night, knowing that I’d plant them and once again I’d doze under the loveliest trees.