The Pomegranate Symbol in Girls That Never Die: Vulnerability, Blood, and Buried Selfhood

The Pomegranate as a Recurring Image of the Female Body's Vulnerability and Buried Selfhood in Girls That Never Die

In Safia Elhillo's Girls That Never Die, the pomegranate appears as a concrete, visceral symbol in two poems—chapter 9, titled simply “Pomegranate,” and chapter 10, “Pomegranate with Partial Nude.” The fruit is never described as a whole, intact object; instead, it is always shown splayed open, its interior exposed. This image of an opened pomegranate becomes a powerful metaphor for the female body under patriarchal control: a body that is peeled, bled, and buried, yet also a body that persists, carrying the color of sisterhood and the memory of what has been discarded.

The Pomegranate in Chapter 9: The Body Opened and Buried

In the poem “Pomegranate,” the speaker begins with a stark declaration: “Because I am their daughter my body is not mine.” This line establishes the central tension—the body is owned by others, raised like fruit, first whole and then peeled. The speaker describes being “raised to bleed in some man’s bed,” linking the fruit's juicy interior to menstrual blood and to the sexual expectations placed on daughters. She receives her name along with instructions to be “pure,” a purity that she questions, wondering if it is wasted on her because she often leaves her body behind to serve as a wife while her awareness drifts above the room.

The poem then shifts to a search: the speaker returns to the soil to find something buried shallow, wrapped in rags stained with old rust—a discarded part buried without ceremony, like fallen seeds. This buried object is never named, but the context of the collection, particularly the earlier chapter “Infibulation Study,” suggests it may be a metaphor for the clitoris or for the self that is cut away and hidden. The speaker notes that she was born uncut, yet she still searches for a part of herself that has been buried, perhaps the part that society demands she suppress. The pomegranate enters at the end of the poem as one of several fruits—date palms veined with the copper taste of cutting, guavas that turn purple as raw meat when slit—and finally the blood orange and the pomegranate, “splayed open, like something that once was alive & remains.” Here the pomegranate is not just a fruit but a body that has been violently opened, its seeds exposed like wounds. The phrase “once was alive & remains” suggests both death and persistence: the body is broken but not gone.

The Pomegranate in Chapter 10: Color of Sisters and Rupture

In “Pomegranate with Partial Nude,” the speaker shifts from the singular body to a collective one. She affirms knowledge of her history, describing cold ocean water that tastes metallic against her thighs. She is three coasts away from the airport road and seven countries from her garden city, emphasizing displacement. The water carries a copper taste, and she connects the pomegranate to her throat: “pomegranate in my throat / color of all my sisters / color of all the girls i know.” The fruit becomes a color—a deep red—that unites the speaker with other girls. Their names are “peeled & sucked” and “spit like seeds from car windows,” an image that turns the girls themselves into pomegranate seeds, consumed and discarded. The names cling to lower lips and to ruptures, suggesting both sexualized violence and the wounds left by erasure. The poem ends with the sun setting on the pomegranate city, and the speaker asks, “where are my sisters / where have they gone?” This question ties the pomegranate to loss and to the disappearance of girls, a theme that recurs throughout the collection, as in the final poem where a girl is buried to the chest in red earth and stoned by a crowd.

Symbolic Meanings and Connections

The pomegranate operates on multiple levels across these two poems. Literally, it is a fruit with many seeds, often associated in mythology with fertility, death, and the underworld. In Elhillo's poems, however, the pomegranate is not a symbol of abundance but of exposure. It is splayed open, its interior visible, mirroring the way girls' bodies are scrutinized, policed, and violated. The seeds, which in other contexts might represent potential or new life, here become names that are spit out, discarded, or buried.

The symbol connects directly to several major themes in the collection. The theme of the policing of girls' bodies and the demand for purity is central: the speaker is raised to be pure, to bleed in a man's bed, and her body is not her own. The pomegranate's opened flesh evokes the violation of that purity. The theme of silence, shame, and the unspoken appears in the buried part, wrapped in rags and buried without ceremony—something that cannot be spoken of directly. The theme of language, naming, and the inadequacy of words is present in the way names are peeled and sucked, then spit out, suggesting that names themselves are insufficient to protect or preserve identity.

The pomegranate also connects to the character of Safia, the speaker, who is named after a dead great-aunt and who carries the weight of that name. In chapter 9, she wonders if the purity she was instructed to embody is wasted on her, and she searches for a buried part of herself. This search can be read as an attempt to reclaim a selfhood that was cut away or hidden. The symbol also connects to the collective of sisters and girls, as in chapter 10, where the pomegranate's color unites them even as their names are discarded. The grandmothers, mentioned in chapter 8, are part of this inheritance: the speaker notes that the Arabic word for cut, when conjugated, is the name of one of her grandmothers, linking the violence of infibulation to family lineage. The pomegranate, with its seeds, becomes a figure for this intergenerational inheritance—the way girls are passed down, peeled, and buried, yet also the way they persist.

The theme of survival and intergenerational inheritance is particularly relevant. In chapter 43, “Red Note with a Line by Ol’ Dirty Bastard,” the speaker declares, “I sprout leaves. I bear fruit & self-sustain.” This fruit-bearing image echoes the pomegranate, but here it is transformed into a symbol of resilience. The speaker survives, even as she goes missing daily. The pomegranate, though splayed open, remains—it is not destroyed. This duality—vulnerability and persistence—is at the heart of the symbol.

Study Questions

1. How does the pomegranate function differently in chapter 9 versus chapter 10?

In chapter 9, the pomegranate is a solitary image of the speaker's own body, splayed open and linked to blood, purity, and a buried part of herself. It is internal and personal. In chapter 10, the pomegranate becomes collective: it is the color of all sisters and girls, and its seeds are their names, spit out and discarded. The shift moves from individual vulnerability to communal loss and erasure.

1. What does the “buried part” in chapter 9 likely represent, and how does the pomegranate relate to it?

The buried part is described as a discarded part wrapped in rags stained with rust, buried without ceremony. Given the collection's focus on infibulation and the cutting of girls, the buried part likely symbolizes the clitoris or the self that is surgically or socially removed. The pomegranate, splayed open, mirrors this opening and cutting, and its seeds resemble the fallen seeds that the buried part is compared to. The pomegranate thus becomes a visible emblem of what is hidden and unspoken.

1. In what ways does the pomegranate connect to the theme of naming and identity?

In chapter 10, the speaker says that the girls' names are “peeled & sucked” and “spit like seeds from car windows.” This image equates names with pomegranate seeds—something that is consumed and then discarded. The names cling to lower lips and ruptures, suggesting that identity is both sexualized and wounded. The pomegranate's color unites the girls, but their names are not enough to keep them present; the speaker asks where her sisters have gone. This connects to the theme of language, naming, and the inadequacy of words.

1. How does the pomegranate's duality of being “splayed open” yet “remains” reflect the collection's broader treatment of survival?

The pomegranate is opened, its interior exposed, but it is not destroyed—it remains. This mirrors the speaker's survival in poems like “Red Note with a Line by Ol’ Dirty Bastard,” where she declares she survives even as she goes missing. The pomegranate's persistence despite being splayed open suggests that girls and women can endure violation and erasure while still retaining a core of selfhood. The final poem, “Girls That Never Die,” reinforces this: the girl is stoned but untouched, and the birds carry away the stones. The pomegranate, like the girl, is a symbol of resilience in the face of violence.