Feb 21
Morning blues and walking ache
Day 453
Confusion. The tree shakes and shimmies, I’m not sure if she’s angry or happy and all I can do is sit, and, hold my hand against her bark — and occassionally walk the fuck away when the acorns and leaves and branches and things begin falling like rain and hail and anger. She still wants me there, it seems, but there’s a darkness around the corner of her trunk that I can’t deny, that I see and feel and taste and smell and know.
it hurts and zaps and lightning, dark, the kind that pulls you in and absorbs oxygen, lungs gasping and eyes squinting-blurry, every outline sharp and brutal and ready to kill
it’s the trauma tree, the one i made
years ago in winter,
rape and assault and words, pouring and — i made this tree, to connect to heal to scream to yell to bleed to love to mourn
death and loss of loved ones, dead children streaming down your face, your babies forgotten, their little hands imprinted on your soul, more you than you, more part of you than the air you forget to breathe, the
heartbreak of touch without words, without anger, eyes empty and taking and wanting but
wanting your body, the power, the soul, not you
I planted the tree and it’s only gotten stronger, roots deeper, screaming into the soil, but — it scares me, but
in a good way
like the fierce joy of screaming into a thunderstorm, knowing you’ll die, the forest swallowing all noise of one puny mouth, one tiny human, one little soul that yells into the sky, fists screaming for help
it’s — dark and light and edges and bright and it’s needed and, what do you call it — valid.
It’s a watering hole for women, huddled, accepting, laughing, loving, anger, it’s — home. For some. Before they find the path away and into the earth/sea/sky that helps them find death or love or actual, happiness, post-grief, post-anger, post-hurt, where those things define them, but merely as a
word on a
list or poem or therapy notes,
no longer the defining feature, the mark of cain across their skin, the definining outline of their soul, all other things paling and empty in comparison
it’s a grief tree, sharing and whole and massive, its roots happy and deep and holding us for as long as we need.
I brush my hands against the bark and peak around the corner to the grief, the thrumming loud-silent darkness on the other side of tomorrow. Its settling, now, the moon swallowing my words and soothing the edges of pain, connecting women in the deep primal way, of late night, of starlight guiding running feet, silent and padded and worry, knife against your hip, food for a day on your back, hands of others — no.
The darkness pulls me in, hundreds of stories and breath and touch and I furrow my brow, confuse my eyes, look away, finding oxygen elsewhere, looking up into the canopy of soft green, swaying, the wind dying down, abdomen moving steadily. Relief. I don’t need to be there, anymore.
I close my eyes and rest my head against the rough, my fingers fading and words softly swirling. I don’t need to be there anymore.
The grief fades, the connection, muted, the stories and lives and anger — back to the corner of tomorrow, friend. You are not needed, now. At least for me.
The tree is there for all to use, though
feel free
-geoa
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❤
