Tears pour out like an ocean from hidden depths, grieving a loss too old to express in words and too wide for thoughts to confine. I sit, surrounded by salt and sea foam, on a desert of water. Seven years of hiding, twenty years of believing. I wake to an ocean wide with solitude, rocking on the tide. I cry and heave into her unfathomable spaciousness, a salty offering, one drop at a time. Mind echoes the voices of thousands, "I am a wave imagining itself separate from the sea". Words. They fall heavy into the depths and I am left thirsty, surrounded by water and longing for a drink.
Yes, I know it doesn't look like much. It was only about 5 inches in diameter and 8 feet tall. The root ball was no more than 3 feet deep. But it was a sweet red-bud tree that we planted the year Bodhi was born, his placenta was buried in it's roots and like many of the trees in our neighborhood, it died (see this post to understand why) . I can't say that I mourned its death in a tangible way, rather it produced in me a sort of unnameable melancholy. I am a woman who loves the spring. I nearly live for it. When the first signs of life emerge like a haze of hope, I drink in green with the passion of a desert crawling woman sipping at an oasis. I gorge. This year has been hard. Our neighborhood isn't leafing out in native splendor, instead the tired trees seem to begrudge the effort, only offering a tender shoot or bud occasionally. The north side of many trees appear to have given up all together, too tired after a long winter...
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