Alexandra Mcmannis | + Follow Poet |
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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.

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