The Seed

I once came across an old man in my building's dumpster, who quivered with shallow breath. I asked if he needed help, and he shook his head. He explained he was a farmer who had no need to sell his crop anymore, which also happened to be himself. "Best to let the bounty return to the earth," he said, with a voice like a can-opener, and laughed. I couldn't, or perhaps simply didn't, argue with this line of reasoning, and tried to empty my garbage in a corner away from him, but he took its contents—coffee grounds, wet paper towels, rotting food, plastic liquor bottles—and used it to tailor what looked like a suit for himself.

After about a month that suit was finished. He took my latest trash bag to lay his head upon and stare at the sky, where, in that virgin blue, a single cloud had formed.

"Looks like a peach," he said. He twisted in the garbage, took a final breath, and died, as if he'd said all he'd needed to say.

But now there was an absence. The tree that had grown from the soil had returned to it and left nothing. And lest I destroy the cycle by my own negligence, I climbed in, rolled him aside, and tried to see if his suit could fit me.

He was right—it did look like a peach.