Garden
By Dalia A. Elmanzalawy
This moment was like taking a bite out of the last fig of the season—
the final taste of a late summer—so dark, the color of bruised midnight.
She is swelled and ripened over many months, blushes crimson at her sweet summit—
that meeting place for lines tracing up her full-hipped beauty.
Now, in low-angled autumn light, under cool leafy canopies,
she and her sisters wait. Her velvety skin so tender and ripe,
so heavy with her own syrupy liqueur, so eager to yield,
the slightest pressure will split her gloriously open
to reveal the treasure within—the sticky, succulent scarlet flesh
cradling her children, the seeds of future generations.
Dalia A. Elmanzalawy was born in Cairo, Egypt and raised in Los Angeles, CA. An avid reader and writer, she is currently working on a debut fiction novel and a short story anthology. She is an undergraduate student at the University of California, San Diego, with a double major in creative writing and biochemistry. Her work appears or is forthcoming in English, French, and Arabic in The Magazine, 580 Split, Santa Fe Writers Project, Middle East Times and Le Progrès Egyptien, among others.