It is, again, the season for figs. Figs languor on a tree which is mine, partly, if land is capable of being possessed. In a notary in a village in France, "yours" and "mine" are real, though you and I no longer exist.

The first time I see it, the season for figs is nearly over. Exploding in the tree, on my hands, the most delicious figs I have ever tasted in my life. I ask myself: can I stay in this marriage for a fig tree?

Some varietals can only grow if a certain female wasp crawls inside the eye of the bud, sheds its wings and antennae, lays its eggs, spreads pollen in the ovaries of the syconium, and dies. The inverted flower releases an enzyme that dissolves the body of the female wasp. This process is called obligate mutualism. I do not know if the tree that is partly mine is the kind that requires the dissolution of another being in order to thrive.

Our family can only grow if one sperm is placed inside one egg and does not die, and is then placed inside me and does not die. This process is called intracytoplasmic sperm injection. You tell me this is our only choice. You want a biological child, you tell me, you want immortality.

These are the steps we must take to create a life.

You knew I would love this fig tree. I gaze at the hectares and boundary lines and renovation potential for which you've signed and I've signed. Our marriage has withered in service to your dream, and I feel not luscious and juicy but hard and twisted and cruel.

I ask why it was easier for you to buy a ruin in France than to pick up your test results down the road. Eyes closed, you say you are tired of these unproductive conversations. I ask you if you'll finally make love to me now.

Desire is the thing that killed our marriage. It crawled inside and stretched and swelled and fermented and burst. Now we own a property ringed with huge, old trees and orange light, and I see why you think it is perfect. And now we cannot find each other, coated in the residue of our sticky dreams.

I grasp a bursting fig in my fingers and pull it open, juices and seeds oozing, floral sharpness intoxicating. I want to be drunk on these figs, to lick and suck and slurp them into my mouth, my tongue, my teeth, I want to devour that mess until I am covered in it and never sated.

Adrianne Miller lives, writes and teaches in Berlin, Germany. Her poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction has been published in Arbors, Libre, A Psychogeography of Brussels, Resilient Voices, and Twisted Ink. Adrianne offers creative writing workshops through the European Writers Salon and the Read Wedding Collective. Her translation and commentary has been featured on KCRW Berlin and WBEZ Chicago.