rotten trees and wind with teeth

Text Version! :3

i miss watching the trees
with a mouth full of apples and metal
while my mother explained
that there's a certain honesty to
the concept of rot.

"the leaves don't hide"
she spoke
"when they get ugly,
when the color bleeds from
the trees' skin, it becomes enviable."

to her, the wind always had teeth.
i could see it, though
every time it broke through her coat
and her voice became bitter.

i recently realized
that every autumn, i try to start over.
but there are no seasons here,
and i no longer have the smoke-scented
hair, my hands no longer know
how to make a fire.

sometimes i light a candle
that smells like home
where there was wind with teeth
and rotten trees.

So many poems still left in the Green Room. Alright, onward!

My first thought about the mouth full of apples and metal was actually abt how this might be about how idk heavy metals make it into the food we eat. But I think it might actually because the narrator wears a teeth correction device? Braces? That could be a hint abt how this takes place in childhood/teens and they are looking back at that time with more wisdom than before.

I also like the idea the mother puts out about embracing decay as something natural, something not to shy away from.

Oh I don’t know how to interpret that part about them not being anywhere where there are seasons. It could simply be that they moved to a country where the seasons are different/unrecognizable. Or they could be entrapped inside so that they cant experience the seasons anymore. They also could have died and this is a ghost reminiscing. Interesting poem for sure, thank you for sharing!

i cant say i really understood your work but still find the wording very pretty

i cant say i really understood your work but still find the wording very pretty

Hello Leya,

I write of physicalized grief, isolation, and the desperate meanings within the decay. Due to this, I equally love to review poems of the exact nature of ruin and resilience, a language I undoubtedly know how to speak.

"I miss watching the trees
with a mouth full of apples and metal
while my mother explained
that there's a certain honesty to
the concept of rot."

Rot cares not for the humanistic nature to hide the foul; it cares not for the grim response, its presence a mere sign of time changing. For that, it is honest; there is no deception in its leaves or its purpose. It is simply fatal, a calm destruction of a more casual time. Of apples and metal, it reminds me of times when the mouth is weak, the gums bleed, but the apple remains sweet.

"the leaves don't hide"
she spoke
"when they get ugly,
when the color bleeds from
the trees' skin, it becomes enviable."

A dash of admiration, an ebb of envy if it were to be an ocean, trees hold no meaning to hide what is deemed ugly. Human admiration only stretches so far until the skin makes marks.

"to her the wind always had teeth.
I could see it, though
every time it broke through her coat
and her voice became bitter"

The wind howls with no mouth, bites with no visible teeth, and destroys with no hands. A seething force in nature, breaking through boundaries and bonds, and leaving behind the bitter result.

"I recently realized
that every autumn, I try to start over.
but there are no seasons here,
and I no longer have the smoke-scented
hair, my hands no longer know
how to make a fire."

It is quite a realization to understand what is truly missing when someone is gone. The little things were simply just that, nonconsequential to your existence of apples and metal, of rot and wind, and here you stand. No season, no fire, no permanence of the past, just hazy memories that are losing their smell.

"sometimes I light a candle
that smells like home
where there was wind with teeth
and rotten trees."

We will go to great lengths to revitalize what we once cherished: jackets that a person wore, scents that remind us of home, songs from mixtapes of lovers past to prevent the memory from fading away completely, succumbing to the rot. Rot is such an honest time, fatality in its natural form, unbeknownst to its own beauty and cruelty.

Sometimes, a hazy touch to a memory lingering on a horizon is the best we can achieve in the times that pass.

I dance in the rain so no one can tell,
Which drops are sky-born and which are mine.
Love, Hawinay