fig — Jocelyn Paige Murphy
poetry ☆
poetry ☆
purple and fat, one tumbles down from its branch,
and splits in two. sweetly,
the tree produces and ripens
as the fallen fig rots.
at dawn, i sit against its trunk and
they plummet down and down,
like the fragile fruits bore a deathwish.
i collect the bits, and drink their juice from the grass.
at dusk, they swing and bang against my window,
squeezing through the cracks in the screen and
plopping themselves upon my pillow–
they grow and they fall, with a ferocity i cannot understand.
i begin to snap them like wishbones and lay them to rest on my floor,
bleeding their seeds out into the threads of the carpet;
now there’s a fig in my sink,
wet with thirst, waiting to be eaten.
the tree should rest for the winter,
limbs cold and quiet,
but it taps its branches
melodically against the glass of the window,
dropping fruits along its sill–
i cannot consume them, not even one.
choosing one meant losing the rest
and so i sat upright in bed,
watching them fall,
dressed in their innocent purples and pinks
inspired by sylvia plath’s fig tree allegory from “the bell jar”
Jocelyn Paige Murphy is an amateur author and practiced melancholic writing poetry and prose from her hometown of San Diego, California. Professionally, she will graduate from San Diego State University with Bachelor’s Degrees in both Psychology and English & Comparative Literature in the Spring of 2026, and plans to complete her Master of Fine Arts Degree in the endearing world of Poetry in years to come. With her affinity for literature and language, she aspires to produce a collection of poetry, and become the author she has always seen in the mirror. Personally, she works as a ballet teacher at a small and local dance studio, the very place where she grew up with a passion for the arts in its many forms. She, currently twenty-one, hopes to spend the rest of her life furthering a deep-rooted love of understanding as she travels, writes, reads, and writes some more. Explore her Instagram for more– @4josiemurphy
