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.
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.
Stunning! Thank you so much for sharing this. Such important work. x
Absolutely beautiful.