The Other Side of the Redwood Tree - Chapter 1

A/N: This is the first chapter of my story told in verse, The Other Side of the Redwood Tree. It's a bit dystopian, with an element of romance, told in verse. (For those of you who are unfamiliar with novels told in verse, they are books/stories told using poetry or poem-like formatting instead of prose.) This chapter is told from the perspective of a teenage boy named Jaxon.

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Jaxon

I am tossed into the courtroom
like a limp rag.
I crumple on the polished gray floor
and a judge with a heavily
powdered wig
stands over me.

“What do you have to say for yourself?”
he demands.

I shrug and say,
“You do realize plants are what make the air
we breathe.”

“Preposterous!”
Powdered Wig shouts,
flecks of spit exploding from his mouth.
“Air is made by wind!”
The courtroom nods in agreement.

“No, wind is just air
moving because of the way the sun heats the planet,”
I say.

The courtroom shouts in dissent.

“How dare you say that?!”
“What kind of education
are they giving kids these days?”
“The education ordered by
the government
and our court.”
“No, it’s a figure of speech!”
“Oh. Well he’s still
a stupid tree-hugger!”
“You are a stain
on your family name
and a stain
on this enlightened civilization!”

The people sitting to the sides
of the musty courtroom
are so furious that they actually start
to shake in their ridiculously over-the-top
purple and red velvet clothes.
Their rich-people jewelry jangles
and some of them begin
throwing trash at me.

The judges take their places behind the
dark oakwood pedestals
and I am roughly set down on a hard wooden chair.

“You,”
Powdered Wig says with disgust.
“You,
Jaxon Stuart,
son of
Mrs. and Mr. Layla and Jon Stuart,
have offended this court
and the entire planet
with your tree-hugging ways!”
He points an accusatory finger at me.

“But if you kill those plants-”
I start but
Powdered Wig
doesn’t let me finish.

“If we kill those plants,”
he announces loudly.
“The world will be saved!”

The courtroom erupts in cheers.

Judge
Powdered Wig
looks very pleased with himself.

I shake my head and the judges
tell the jury to decide a punishment.

All tree-hugging,
(an official and terrible crime,)
is punished.
some punishments are worse than others,
but they’re all pretty much the same.

Rot in a jail cell
for fifty years;
sit in a corner
of a jail cell
for fifty years;
Lie in a jail cell
for - you guessed it -
fifty years.

But this time
the jury decides something different.
Something I’ve never even
heard of before.

And I thought no one
on the court was capable
of original thought.