Not fruit, but inverted flower, like you,
the female fig blooms inside the pod.
Your belly grows rounder. Breasts already less
your own. The male figs stay inedible as wasps
burrow, lay their eggs inside before dying.
Your weekly updates tell you the baby
can now open and close its seed-sized fists.
At night you think you feel it, the squeeze-release,
then reach into your mouth and pull out grains
of dentin or enamel from holding shut
too tight. You have your father's mouth.
His rotting teeth. If a wasp found herself inside
a female fig—a common error among
ripeness, hard to tell the sex
of skin—she would starve, exoskeleton
devoured by the fig’s ficin, absorbed
into the fruit-flower’s flesh. In your grandmother's
Odessa orchard, your father would bite
into males and females indiscriminately, spit out
what tasted foul, wings or venom, just born
male wasps, blind and tunneling their way
out into autumn light.
