Maybe I am a tree. A white birch tree with dark stripes along the column of me. Maybe I have veered off at funny sudden angles. Maybe my branching and growing is not elegant and sloping but knobby like elbows. Maybe I am somehow in a wood full of no other like me. Who made me to be here?
Maybe I have fallen. Maybe I am laying on the littered ground. Maybe my body has molded itself to this new home. Maybe I am becoming something good again. My white and peeling shell contrasted against the brown and shredding leaves, my arms still out and reaching. My face still turned toward the light, my roots embarrassingly exposed. I am a curious shape upon which to climb. I am a quiet place to ponder.
Maybe my shoulders and hips and turned, stacked legs are dissolving into the earth. Little parts of myself carried off to be renewed. Little patches of snow. Remnants of crunchy leaves. Among them maybe I am still and becoming. A hub of activity within me, and seeds blown into me and around me and wedged and protected and nourished by me are growing tendrils into the ground.
In the spring time and glancing all around me will be the idea of green, and looking closer and longer, the yellow green will glow with promise. And deepen. The green all around will begin as a sideways crayon shading. Surprises. Then smiles. Then promises fulfilled. Then glorious day and color and green and life and new.
Color I will be then. I don’t know what kind of flower, but I’m sure that’s what I want to be. And my decayed DNA will have fed into these new little buds and made them vibrant and cheery. I am picturing it now, and I want to see it now.
I think about going to the store and buying some flowers just so I can see the color now. Maybe I will. Maybe I will buy them and cut them and put them in a jar and stare at them and stare at them until I believe it.
Oh but here they are. Yellow and green and white and gold. Lilies just opening and their heavenly scent escaping. Lilies of white with yellow stamens and pink speckles along their petals, pointing their visitors to the nectar inside. Bright yellow, happy roses on long green stems. I see them upon waking and I smell them upon sleeping.
Something good and new and alive. Something of the promise of what is to come. Not yet but soon. Somewhere above and in and around is a something that brings this miracle to pass. That the matter of myself can someday be the matter of flowers. That the matter of flowers can somehow be on my nightstand on a wintry gray day. Appearing with but a wish and a longing.
Birds they fly overhead and their feathers layered perfectly protect their tiny selves from the cold. They seek out what they need, and they find it near me. Flock at landing, cacophony of birdsong, clothed you are and fed. So much more for the idle birch transforming, for she has been brought flowers. How much more is she loved by him who feeds the birds. For she has been brought flowers and now her skin is covered in feathers. Quiet, rest, stillness, and hope.
And then
warming,
condensation,
breaking open,
diffusion of light and photosynthesis,
birth,
life,
growth,
promise,
strength,
destination,
green,
beloved yellow,
and beauty.
Beauty and joy.
Sara Quah Music 