You cannot see the Nisqually from my house for all the Evergreen.
We passed into Autumn, much as every year,
Admire the color!
Of the lone deciduous, Broad Leaf Maple;
It suffers terribly.
Unable to reach the sky as quickly as Hemlock,
Lost light, condemned trunk to soft blanket of moss, her only winter coat.
You probably don’t know why I was so angry, why I pinned your arms, coming from behind, biting you on the neck. Remembering how I cut a shadow into your mother’s yard when I was 16,
Underneath the kitchen window, why you made me wait, till it turned me shades of yellow, learning patience.
Now is the time when it changes colors, leaves from green to yellow, and I see that Maple and would ask it,
‘What is it like to be so very different and beautiful, all your colorful leaves fallen around you like rose petals at your debutante ball? How does it feel to be surrounded by a thousand Noble suitors?’
‘Naked,’ you told me.
In my front yard there is a tiny spruce, and I imagine I will chop it down at Christmas and dress it up in red ribbons and bows, string lights and ornaments around the branches, and I will ask it,
‘Now aren’t you precious! How do you feel, so pretty and dressed up?’
‘Like I’ve been cut down in the prime of my youth, afraid of December.’
And the greatest compliment wasn’t when you said, ‘It belongs in a journal,’
But instead begged me to give it to you, so that you could keep it from other eyes.
You threw it on the coals, and I waited, until the chapbook’s corners began to look like an antique dresser;
And I knew I would prefer the words that remained, smoldering, but spared the fire.
I forget standing outside your window in the dark;
Patient while the other boys play, having you easy.
Learning to wait so that all these years later, I can so carelessly stir the forest floor.
Tag: Metonymy