Poem #18: Monotone Renditions of Poetry

We delivered monotone renditions of poetry, standing at the forest’s edge. It was winter, and my breath burst like shards of glass on the air.

You asked, “am I afraid?” and I could only stare at the way your face complimented the lines of the valley below. My icy breath cracked your smile.

We were sentinels of the unknown, knowing only what we were never told, rooted to this spot because it was our everything. The trees were imposing, whispering among themselves that we were the imposters, that we could not stand so tall and bear so much. But we proved them wrong.

There was no warmth in your smile, or even your eyes, as your hands, clasped behind your back like talons, shook with despair. The others looked only to the sky but, you and I, we knew what they did not. We knew, as the trees knew, that nothing good will end.

We were not good. We were the spawn of discontent and disillusion, the reaction of the sky to a thunderstorm, do you understand, love, that we were the trees? That we were the breath of the sky.

You grew weary and as your eyes dropped their pretenses I glanced at the others, rooted in this haphazard circle we formed with our upright bodies, mocking the foliage before us, mocking the earth that formed us. Their eyes were marbles of silver glass reflecting the sea of leaves that was to surround us, times yet to come.

And we laughed. We could not write the poetry we spoke so fluently and it broke down into language, it broke into confetti, it rained on our faces. We were.

And you? I wondered, love, if you were like us at all. I wondered if the pine trees were your brothers or your friends, and if when the sky fell on you, it broke your back.

We could move on. Uprooting ourselves from what we had thought to be real, we grew into something more. It was the trees in the end that taught us, that spoke to us through the wind and the rustle of needles.

You said, once, that it reminded you of dying. But tell me, how did you know what that was like?

It reminded us of living, and we left you there to take root, to give up, and to whisper. Maybe, someday, I will come back and spread your seeds across the globe. Today, you are just foliage.


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PROSE POETRY!!! sorry if it's annoying.