The Threshold

Rooted and silent, branches heavy with fruit. It cannot ask who stands beneath – whether the hands are open or the ground is stone. It bears until the branch bends, and lets go. The tree does not decide to give. Giving is simply what sap becomes. Its roots draw from water it never earned, from soil it never built. It receives and gives; it never mistakes one for the other. The fruit falls where it falls – on grateful hands, on barren stone, into lives that will never learn its name. The tree knows no other way. It roots. It rises. It lets go.

The Way

The branch that bears heaviest builds the strongest wood. The branch that bears nothing withers. Each season carves the roots deeper, towards water the tree never knew was there. Then comes the season when nothing remains but the core, hollowed by all it carried. The sweetness dries to rind. The sap slows; every branch aches to close – the ache indistinguishable from rest. But the roots know the way, grooved by all they carried before. Into that stillness, a hand reaches – young, hungry – toward the last fruit. You have nothing left. You open anyway. The bark splits where the fruit tears free. Some fruit falls on stone and rots. Some is taken by hands that never look up. The tree knows. It bears fruit anyway. Its vow belongs to the seed, never the soil.

The Shadow

The Generous bore freely – no hesitation, no conditions. Her fruit fell on good soil; hands received it warmly. The seeds never took root. She bore more. A young man came in a dry year. She watched him eat – his shoulders squaring, his colour returning. Three seasons she poured her sap into one branch – the one that reached toward him. The other branches thinned. She did not notice. He grew strong. One morning she saw him standing at the edge of her shade, facing outward. She bore one more fruit – the last the branch could carry. It fell at his feet. He stepped over it. She bore more. Weaker now. She died still bearing, her last fruit falling on earth that had already forgotten her name. As the final fruit drops, she wonders: what was wrong with my sweetness? Nothing. Some soil is barren no matter what falls. ❖ The Wise counts the rings in his wood. He has watched fruit fall on stone and rot. Watched hands take without looking up. He swore: his sweetness would find soil that holds. Now he reads the ground before the fruit falls. This earth, too shallow. Those hands, too careless. He holds the branch until certainty arrives. A girl came in the drought year. She stood beneath his branches three days – lips cracked, saying nothing. She did not reach. She waited. On the third day, the branch bent of its own accord. One fruit hung so low she could have taken it. He felt the pull – sap straining against his grip, the sweetness ready, the wood groaning toward release. His roots read the soil beneath her feet. Sandy. Shallow. He held. She left on the fourth morning. He watched her walk east, toward trees that bore without reading the ground. Years later, a traveller rests in his shade and speaks of a grove to the east – planted, he says, by a woman with cracked lips. He does not answer. Above him, the fruit of that summer still hangs – blackened, fused to the stem. He cannot tell where the stem ends and his grip begins. He dies heavy, bent by his own sweetness. What he refused to offer fermented into rot within his own heartwood. To the east, an orchard he didn't plant.

The Cut