The Tattooed Trees

A poem

I’ve got something a little different for you today….

This poem has been kicking around in my head ever since I attended a vigil hosted by Ancestral Medicine back in November. Frankly, I avoided working on it for a long time because I knew it would be difficult: an attempt to capture a pain beyond words, to give it shape through a series of images that kept returning to me. But I finally sat down to write it, and this is what emerged.

This piece is dedicated to the ghosts, to the trees, to all who bear impossible burdens. May we find our way to a future of liberation for all.

---

A grove of trees silhouetted against a hazy sunset sky. Photo by David Boca on Unsplash.

The Tattooed Trees

they call us by many names
in many tongues:
the ones who survived.
the grove of remembrance.
the tattooed trees.

the floating ash, that
was the first sign.
rumbles among our
roots, shock waves
rippling the air.
signals of distress
from other orchards,
coming fast and frequent and then—
nothing.
silence.

the quiet—too quiet—what became of
all the birds? even the insects
were subdued, like everything was hiding,
afraid to utter a sound.
to exist at all was dangerous
in a world that wanted you to disappear

the living may have been quiet,
but the dead were loud.
anyone who set foot on this land knew
that we had a ghost problem.
the angry dead, the confused dead,
the young dead, the lost dead,
the hate-fueled dead, the grief-stricken dead,
the restless dead, the terrified dead,
the dead, the dead, the dead.
air so thick with them
that the living could barely
get a breath in.

the seasons passed slowly
our leaves silvered with ash
through the smoky haze
we wondered if we’d ever
see the sun again

after immeasurable time
the rains came.
the sky brightened.
we exhaled.

one day a visitor wanders
into our grove.
in her arms: a stuffed cat.
she sits at the base of a tree.
digs a small hole
with her bare hands.
sets the stuffed cat gently inside.
covers it with earth.
takes out a knife.
touches the blade to a branch.
begins to carve.

every morning, she says—
          blade digging into our flesh, oh—
every morning I made you
pull up your sleeve
I wrote your name on your arm
you asked why and I did not want to say
that it was so I would still know you
even if I found in the rubble
a body that had no life, no face.
and yet you still were lost. I am sorry
I couldn’t protect you from this,
I am sorry but also I am glad
that you did not have to see
the worst days. even now,
I am still hungry.
I will never not be.
and since you are no more
I write your name on the arm
of this tree, proof that you existed,
and I leave Zeitoun for you to snuggle,
you always found so much comfort
in soft things and I hope
     	I hope someday—
                oh, my love—
                         oh how I miss you

she scratches the final mark.
runs her fingers over
her child’s name and—
we all feel it, the whole grove feels it—
a tiny sigh. the smallest exhale.
a fresh breeze ripples our leaves.
a ghost, released.

years have passed since that day.
now our limbs are covered
in names of the dead,
written in many alphabets
names of children, doctors, hostages,
poets, soldiers, bakers, entire families:
a grisly catalogue
of all who disappeared

our arms throb with remembrance.
our roots curl around
buried ribbons, shoes, toys, bones.
pieces of the lost.

none of us asked to bear
this impossible weight
and yet we do,
and yet
         	we do.

---