“The Orchard That Grew from My Regrets”

The Orchard That Grew from My Regrets

Poetic Fiction

I never meant to build an orchard out of the things I wished had never happened. But regret has a way of rooting itself even when you try your hardest to forget where you buried it.

My grandmother used to say that trees hear everything.

“Wood remembers,” she whispered once, while planting a fig tree behind our old house. I was six, too young to understand memory beyond scraped knees and spilled milk. But I remember the way her fingers sank gently into the soil, how she pressed it closed as if tucking a secret into a bed.

After she died, the fig tree still grew.

And I began to understand.

Years later—decades, really—when life grew sharp at the edges and my chest felt too tight to hold all the things I regretted, I found myself standing beneath that same tree. The bark was rough under my palm, a map of years I had wasted not paying attention. The branches were heavy with dark purple figs, swollen and sweet, bending the air with their scent.

That was the night I buried the first regret.

It was small enough to fit between two fingers: a silver earring, the kind you wear only once and forget about. But it wasn’t the earring that mattered—it was what it symbolized. The night I wore it was the night I didn’t show up for my sister’s last dance recital. I had chosen work instead. A decision that seemed mature at the time, but small cruelties often hide inside practical choices.

She never danced again.

I pushed the earring into the dirt at the base of the tree.

“It’s yours now,” I whispered.

The wind rustled the leaves overhead, as if the tree had heard.

That winter was cruel and long.

Cold air stitched itself into every seam of the house.

I barely went outside.

But when spring came, I noticed something strange.

The fig tree had changed.

A single silver fruit hung low from a branch.

It shimmered. It pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat caught inside glass.

I plucked it, half-afraid. The moment my fingers closed around it, I heard the faintest whisper—my sister’s laugh, the one I hadn’t heard in years. Sweet. Bright. Gone too soon.

The fruit tasted like forgiveness.

But it didn’t erase the regret.

It only made me brave enough to plant another.

The second regret was heavier.

It was a postcard I had never sent.

A friend I loved and then stopped talking to because I was too afraid of what loving them meant.

The card was creased at the edges from years spent in drawers, then boxes, then a half-forgotten memory tucked between the pages of an old journal.

I buried it beside the first regret, pressing my fingers deeper this time—down to where the soil felt cool and steady.

That summer, the tree sprouted two branches that hadn’t existed before.

They curled outward like open hands, holding fruit I’d never seen in any orchard: translucent spheres glowing pale blue, like frozen teardrops suspended in air.

I plucked one.

The taste was soft, almost warm.

And then I heard it—my friend’s voice, saying the words I had been too afraid to hear:

“You should have told me.”

I cried under the tree until the moon rose.

Regret softened just enough for me to breathe.

And so it went, season after season.

My orchard grew—not with saplings, but with memories buried carefully beneath the roots of the fig tree.

Some regrets were small: a birthday I had forgotten, a letter I never replied to, a lie told out of fear.

Some regrets were heavy: a goodbye spoken too sharply, a love walked away from, a truth avoided until it hardened inside me like a stone.

With each regret I planted, the tree changed.

Some years, its fruit glowed like lanterns.

Other years, they grew in dark clusters, dripping with bitterness.

Each fruit tasted like the person I used to be and the person I might still become.

Neighbors whispered that the tree was strange.

Some said it was haunted.

I said nothing.

I was learning to live with what I had buried.

One autumn evening, I found myself standing beneath the tree with a regret I had carried for too long.

Not an object this time—just a memory:

The night my mother asked, “Are you happy?”

And I said, “Of course.”

Even though I wasn’t.

Even though she was the one person I could have told the truth to.

She died six months later.

I knelt at the base of the tree, hands trembling.

“I wish,” I whispered, “I had let you see me.”

There was no object to bury, so I pressed my palms into the soil itself, as if the earth could pull the pain out of me.

That winter, the tree grew quiet.

But when spring came—the ground beneath the tree split open with roots twisting outward, forming a ring of saplings. Not a single fig. Not even a leaf.

Instead, a circle of new trees, all waiting to grow.

My orchard had begun.

Not of regrets anymore, but of the life I still had time to plant.

And for the first time in years, the fruit tasted like hope.