I brought a fiddle leaf fig into the apartment after the fight. It was almost too tall for the corner, leaves wide as the doors I slammed in the middle of arguments. They said nothing when I carried it in, shoulders tight with suspicion. I wanted to tell it everything—how I loved them and feared them, how the bruises had names but I could not speak them aloud.
At night, I whispered to the fig. I told it about the nights I crouched in the kitchen, counting the cracks in the floorboards, pretending I was invisible. I told it about the hands that could both hold and harm, the mouth that could both bless and curse. And the fig listened. Its leaves rustled, shadows stretching across walls, comforting in their immobility.
Eventually, I moved it closer to the light. Its growth was slow, careful. My growth was slow, careful. We were both learning to stretch toward safety, toward sunlight, away from the places where darkness lingered in corners, where thorns hid in plain sight.
Somewhere, in the folds of the leaves, the fig held my secrets. And I, for the first time in a long time, could breathe.
Toya L. Walker is an educator, gardener, and founder of Organically Grown Queen, where she combines gardening, storytelling, and creative expression to help people reconnect with nature and their own cultural roots. She has presented at conferences including Herbstalk and NOFA, and her work focuses on native plants, urban gardening, and using sensory observation to inspire writing and art. Through her workshops, Toya shows how even the smallest garden space can become a place for imagination, learning, and community connection.