Reese Derrenberger, "Fig," 2008
The memory of sweetness, hollowed out. It stopped me, as I bent to pry up milk-sapped spurge from a fissure in the drive (for what? it won’t save the spalled concrete)—a ruin of what was once a honey bee, its head excavated, sightless, resting near a broken thorax, an empty abdomen. When I went to look again after weeding, it was gone. I felt as if I’d misplaced a letter sent by an old friend, then misplaced not just the letter, but the empty envelope, the blue-and-white Chinese porcelain dish where I’d set it, that I’d even misplaced the memory of paper sacks full of sweet honey figs still warm from his garden.