A Beginner's Guide To Gardening

There stands an orchard

somewhere amidst nowhere,

that believes in fairness.

Not the old kind;

no blindfolds, no scales,

nor the inconvenience of being consistent.

No.

This one has evolved.

It remembers selectively.

It feels strategically.

It has gardeners:

trained, articulate,

excellent at explaining weather

to people who have never been wet.

Fruits don’t fall here.

Let’s not insult intelligence.

They are assigned gravity.

A ripe one?

Heavier;

if its lineage reads well on paper.

A rotten one?

Lighter;

if its fall makes things awkward.

Balance, they say,

isn’t about weight.

It is about relevance, 

and relevance, 

let’s not pretend, 

is just a leaky gland with a better dictionary.

There came a storm once,

upon this orchard.

Not cinematic.

Quiet. Contagious.

The inherited kind.

Branches snapped.

Roots drowned.

Fruits fell like overdue honesty.

And the orchard, 

efficient as ever, 

did what it always does

when reality becomes unavoidable.

It agreed.

“Yes. This is real.

Yes. This matters.

Yes. We should have noticed sooner.”

Beautiful.

Timely.

Functionally useless.

And then, because irony has impeccable timing, 

a single fruit fell

on a clean afternoon.

No wind.

No warning.

No convenient backstory.

Just gravity;

temporarily unemployed.

It hit.

And where it touched, 

it didn’t bruise.

It engraved.

The tree darkened.

The air shifted.

Even silence stopped pretending it wasn't biased.

“What happened?”

you asked.

And the fruit, 

because lies love a well-lit stage, 

said:

“I chose to fall.”

Now, here's where things get uncomfortable.

Storms don’t choose.

People do.

And people

love choice

when it protects them

and context

when it excuses them.

You paused.

Not out of confusion.

Out of recognition.

Because this, 

this wasn’t rain.

It wouldn’t repeat.

Wouldn’t organise itself

into a pattern you could study

without consequence.

This was intent

wearing tragedy like a chameleon skin.

And that, 

doesn’t sit well in frameworks.

So you adjusted.

Not enough to deny the mark,

that would be indecent.

Just enough

to dilute consequence

into conversation.

You called it anomaly.

You called it nuance.

You called it complex.

You called it everything

except what it was.

Because naming it

means forfeiting control

over what comes next.

And control, 

is the only thing

your fairness has ever been fair about.

The tree stood there.

Alive, 

on a technicality.

Trusted, 

not that it mattered.

Trust is soft.

Doesn’t photograph well.

So you moved on.

And the fruit?

Gone.

Returned to the soil

like accountability always does

when the ecosystem is curated.

Seasons passed.

Storms came.

Storms went.

And you;

you got better

at recognising rain.

Stories for skeletons.

Language for flesh.

Loud microphones and anticipatory applauses for skin.

But something else grew alongside.

Quietly.

Efficiently.

Predictably.

A math.

Not of storms, 

but of choices

learning how to cosplay as them.

A sapling, 

young enough to still believe

questions aren’t punished, 

asked:

“If a storm breaks a branch,

and a fruit chooses

to break one the same way, 

why do we fix them differently?”

You didn’t answer.

Of course you didn’t.

Because answering

requires admitting

the one thing

your entire orchard is allergic to:

That fire, 

whether invited by sky

or delivered by hand, 

does not check intent

before it burns.

That the tree

doesn’t heal differently.

Only the story does.

And stories, 

you’ve industrialised those.

So you kept voting on gravity.

This fall: natural.

That fall: negotiable.

This one: tragic.

That one: circumstantial.

Until the sky filled up.

Not with storms.

With fruits.

Waiting.

Watching.

Learning

how to fall

in ways

you’d forgive.

And here’s the part

you’ll hate;

not because it’s wrong,

but because it’s familiar:

You built this orchard.

Not alone, 

relax.

But you maintain it.

Every hesitation.

Every softening.

Every better story

chosen over a harder truth.

You are there.

In the soil.

In the scale.

In the edits

you pretend are ethics.

One day,

there will be no storms left

to blame.

No history

to outsource guilt to.

No patterns

to hide behind.

Just a sky

full of things

choosing

exactly

how they fall.

And you, 

with all your nuance,

your care,

your elegantly worded restraint, 

will still not have learned

the only law

you broke first:

A fall

doesn’t become lighter

because you agreed

to understand it.