Tree'O Life

His name was ___, and he was a seed.

Born in the scorched dirt of a small plot to the South, where the adjacent earth was soupy red and salted loam. And it was no garden, but who could imagine richer soil; he was where he was from: a seed grown where planted.

Dormant, he felt insignificant and invisible. A small, leafless thing buried underground; pith unseen. He was barely a dream of tomorrow, if he was anything. A spore, or a germ, or a tumor—he wasn’t quite sure himself. Who could possibly see what was hidden beneath the layered clod? 

But the sun shone.

And Niram grew slowly; from sprout to seedling, soaking in surroundings. When he first cast his roots into the earth they were wide, but they were shallow; barely gracing the skeletons of his ancestors beneath him. So much was missed; for every three caps there was a universe, rooting out beyond him. Niram was young.

But he smelled fruit…

The soil was crowded and there was shade all around, so the seeds grew together towards sun. And he grew slowly, and the buds around him grew slowly; there was so little space. The rain would fall scattered, and Niram sat and wondered at dry leaves: with so much water, why was there never enough? What could they bear?

Then it would storm, and Niram watched the water, log; and the blossoms, wave; and stiff limbs breaking against the heavy wind. And drowned seeds would float to the surface, exposed in excess; little more than wet spores of dust. He watched fire blight caress the veins of nearby leaves, and gray blades split and sour before falling dead to the earth. And while kernel after kernel was lost, all Niram could do was sink the roots of his fingers deeper into the soil, holding on.

Feeling.

He realized the earth was full of bone; arranged so as to tell a story. A tale of survival and circumstance written in the stone of a withered district and the Black skulls of its people. He was the relic of a Greenwood and massacre—a survivor! A fragile pit of hope cast within the womb of future soil. Niram held the crust of the truth, and it was solid, and the storm was suddenly breeze.

And he blossomed. The sun rose high above his head, buds burst, and ivory flowers sprout from his crown; tangled and knotted like locs of hair. And not just him. All around the orchard, laurels bloomed and opened to the light, coloring the garden every shade of emerald. He could hardly believe it was the same dirt plot from seasons prior. What was once bare and leafless, was now lush and verdant.

He had flowered.

But sitting beneath the moonglitter, Niram still felt the same. He felt like a seed. His leaves had greened, and his trunk had widened, and he’d grown tall enough to see some forest; but who made these changes? Just East of his soil, men raped the earth as fire rained from the sky. What of those seeds, Niram would think. 

And the earth would turn, and the sun would rise, and he would get to breathe another day.

~

Across the clearing, Niram gazed at a branchless tree. It’s bark was gnarled and its trunk was a crooked obelisk fired at the heavens, but the tree was beautiful, swaying in the breeze. Standing. And as a smile crept to Niram’s lips, the green-gold bulb of a sugared pear dropped and dangled in front of his nose.

The fruit was his.