Back to Eden by Francine Witte

And Eve, standing alone by the tree and still thinking about that serpent. How he asked her to go find Adam. Do it now, he had said and slithered away. She watched the serpent curl and twine himself back among the branches. So sure of himself, she thought.

Eve thinks about how she wants Adam to be more — more oak than feathergrass, more apple core than flimsy, bitable skin.

She knows the serpent will be back.  Together they will try to convince Adam. Inside, Eve wishes Adam would say no. Eve wishes she could say no herself.

The leaves are shaking all around her. Green and sweet and damp. Drops from the leftover rain.

She looks up, looking for the God eye. Wants to know why God would give her such a soft brush of a man. Wants to know why she, herself, isn’t more.  When she sees nothing, she shrugs and thinks this is how the future of humans will be.

Eve thinks back to just last week, when she herself was raindrop. Soon, she became a curl on the loamy ground. The sweet dirt scent winding into her hair. Above her Adam, standing there, holding the place where a rib was, the last time she saw him like that, all bark and straight and himself for that tiniest of moments looking something like a tree.