Published in Flora Fiction
On Saturday, I learned that willow trees can reroot
from branches that they lose too early: hacked off
by a cotton-clad man, snapped off by a child
curious to hear the tree’s knuckles pop, chased
off by the threat of static existence.
On Sunday, I saw faces in the matted hair
of a weeping willow. I beheld the rounded,
indeterminate cheeks of a newborn, and how
its tangled, olive arms reached for its mother’s
hunched shoulders. She held a woman’s head
in her lap—her limber fingers brushing
the bristled peaks of the woman’s brows.
All their eyes were swept toward mine
with a sluggish brushstroke—tomorrow,
the wind will mutilate their fleeting permeance.
These eyes that held mine in a chilled embrace
will become ears, or souls, or nothing. I feel
their voices maneuver through the pin pricked seeds
planted along my naked arms as I surrender
my breath to the robin’s ballad, the imperial
moth’s flutter, the mule deer’s bite.
Collapsing into the earth beneath me, my legs
peek through the other side. And as an ardent river
rushes through the creases in my feet—moments
before soil kisses my lips—my first epitaph escapes
in a sedated whisper: “I will remember these weeping
willows even if a different air fills my lungs.”
Jaden Fong 