The Memory Tree

There were times, long ago, when the young, preteen me would intertwine herself with the age-limp branches of one of the two odd trees out. But now, five years later, the new me has reshaped her story, gazing back on the memory of a childhood lost forever. The rough, tangled bark, painted with decade-old blood and knifepoint carvings and skin interlaced in its valleys where her knees had once tread. I remember it and her tearless eyes; where has the fearlessness gone? There was once birdsong there, mingling with my ignorant laughter. The occasional scream there sounded, too, when a prepubescent girl saw eight legs and two beady eyes: just as scared of her as she was of it. Most of these things are gone now, replaced by year-dried leaves and tripping roots. But I have left my mark there, my own memory at its roots: a pool of purple tinged wax and a skunkline of ash halfway up its trunk; a mirror to the pain I felt that day. Now, when I return, the smoke is still present, clinging to the hairs of my nostrils. Although, one scent has always lived there, even before I arrived, beaming from the skies: the smell of dew-coated leaves, the sunrise, of a child’s first breath. Here I can find peace, lost in the memory of my old life. How I wish to forget it; and yet each month, I find myself crying beneath its love-lost leaves.