Young Writers Society

Dispersion

One day, when the fog had nested
down in the brush and under the bellies
of the wet, spotted leaves,
we planted ourselves
in its absence. We waited then,
under the fat sun, for roots and leaves
and swarthy branches
to untangle and detach themselves from our skin,
for them to push from the crowns of our heads like antlers.
We grew – slowly, our skin
first breaking like porcelain and then more like paper,
turning to mulch around our wormlike roots,
which rose and leapt and burrowed under the ground again,
like fish leaping from water.

She spoke out of her tired, dilated spine
about how her lumberous body
seemed to ask for wildfire,
for ash. She heaved a great sigh,
scattering water onto the ground from her boughs.
She turned to me, creaking like
the underbelly of a ship, to say,
“It is heavier than I thought it would be.”
Her trunk sloped downwards into the sleeping fog,
threatening to collapse altogether.

She talked about light
and hunger, how her hands
could not seek anymore, only grew and splintered
and were thin, always twisting into the dark –
the luminescence she could see,
spreading upwards and far off, from our old house.
And then, she was silent, watching the light
as if she were a quiet predator, as if praying for it.

“I bet they’ve built a fire in the fireplace.
The smoke is so delicate.
I wonder how far it goes up there,
before it starts disappearing, too.”