At eighty feet tall, you are the runt
of your family. Resistant to pest or prey,
your only enemy is a cleansing fire,
a tantrum wind. I visited you at seven,
carved my name into your spine,
and expected myself to bleed. I wanted to amputate
myself from you, to peel you from my veins.
My mother says if we leave you alone, you can live
for six hundred years. Once, I dreamt she found the chainsaw
beneath my bed, the teeth rusted together
like your tangle of roots, a stitch in our fabric
I cannot unweave. Years later, I returned
to find you’d been harvested, plucked
from the earth like a feather. Some days
I pull pickled bark from my throat. Some days
I cut myself in half just to count the rings.
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I love the closing lines!
Parentals…#complicated 🙂 This is awesome!
I think this is pretty amazing.