Inkwell 2018-2019

The Tree and I by Erin Hansbrough The tree and I grew up together, Watching fall turn us red and brown And summer cover us in a green and hidden hideaway, Sitting in silence as the world brought passersby To talk and pretend and fade away again. It was a small tree, and I was a small girl. I sat on arms-stretched-wide branches, And we understood, through the faint, Leaf-caught rain or dappled sun and shade That the tree and I would always be there. The maple and I, we were constant, an island in a storm, And people we loved sailed across the world And stayed a while. Then they drifted away on swift currents, And we never saw them again. Me, the tree, we grew weary of new faces Becoming old faces, becoming gone. After a long time, we started to grow, Twisting into each other until nothing remained But bark and leaf and silence. We dug our roots deeper into the earth And fell asleep beneath the sky, Branches close and tight and one. Time passed. The seas stilled, And no more soft hands reached up To pull smiling new faces into our arms, But we didn’t mind. The tree and I had each other, And in the end, that’s all that ever really mattered.

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Ava Lazar