Eve’s story

William Patterson

The quiet and sun-dappled leaves were all I knew.  In the morning, the birds flew away beyond the garden  And returned in the evening,  

But where they went, I wanted to know.  

One more time I approached the Tree.  

My eyes ran over the smooth bark,  

Over its playful patterns,  

Over a forked tongue peeking from the other side.  Two lidless eyes emerged; a serpent.  

It had jet black slits for pupils  

That seemed to open into the cosmos before there was light.  It was clothed in scales of a scorched celestial gold;  Diminished, yet more dazzling than anything else in the garden.  

“Did god really say you shall not eat  

from any tree in the garden?” The serpent whispered.  “No,” I said, catching his lie.  

“We may eat of the fruit of the garden,  

But God said you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree  Which is in the midst of the garden,  

And you must not touch it, or you will die.”  

“Oh” said the serpent, sounding perplexed.  

“I must have been mistaken.  

But what I am not mistaken in is this:”  

He said, inching closer.  

I hesitated, but felt his tail coiling around my hand,  Firmly or affectionately,  

I couldn’t tell,  

But my curiosity indulged the serpent.  

“You will not certainly die,  

For God knows that when you eat from it,  

Your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God,”   The serpent said, looking straight into my eyes,  “Knowing good and evil.”  

I was shocked, and yet a part of me already knew.  The serpent’s words took the forbidden, inevitable thought  That I had hid from myself of late, 

And conjured it into reality.  

“What was God hiding from us?  

Perhaps he afraid of us.  

Afraid of his most precious,  

most fearful creation.”  

I noticed the two lumps in the serpent’s body.  

He had already eaten from both trees.  

His fangs dripped with the dark purple juice of the fruit.  His barbed tongue, painted with the juice,  

Stained my blushing cheek.  

I guess I did not want to live in the garden forever.  

I got bored.  

I could no longer be confined to the known.  

I wished to see the rest of the world,  

And I knew that this mystery would torment me forever  Unless I took and ate.  

I knew that the world was larger than the garden,  

But forgot that heaven was larger yet than the world.  

I thought it better to seize life,  

To seize the unknown,  

Than to always wonder what could have been.  

The fruit hung so tenuously to the branch,  

Colorful and bursting.  

I reached up, I seized the fruit, the unknown, and then, I knew.  In plucking down the fruit, I thought I could pluck down heaven,  And I hoped God and his great host would come tumbling down after it.  

“What’s the worst that could happen?”  

‘SNAP’ went the stem.  

If only I knew how many lives clung to that branch.  

If only I knew what would break into the world when I broke the stem.  

And now…when I touch my wrinkled face and gray hair,  And look on my violent sons,  

Toiling over barren and bloody fields,  

I think of that moment.  

Well, at least I know what’s beyond the garden.  

At least I made my own decision.  

If only I had eaten from the Tree of Life as well.