The Glass Orchard

I n the walled garden of glass, every fruit held a stolen memory. The caretaker walked the rows at dawn, naming the seasons by their weight.

S he plucked a pear the color of an autumn afternoon and pressed it to her lips. Somewhere behind her eyes, a stranger's childhood bloomed.

T he garden had been her mother's, and her grandmother's before that. They had all learned, eventually, that you cannot keep what was never yours to grow.