Some trees are male, some female;Our house had four of them,And though I circled them every day as a kid—Looking for any protrusions, danglings or slits—I could never muster the courageTo ask Dad or MomLet alone the tree itself:Are you a man or a woman?
Between the sweet gum—Where the June bugs clungAnd hovered down gracefullyLike fairies onto the dusty screen doorI knifed near the handleSo that I could sneak back inWithout disturbing the fallenSeed pods, sharp, sneezed in the yard—Ammunition to play fight—Aiming for exposed skin,Hurting each other for a laugh,Never to wound,Practicing for our turn to playThe game our parents were so good at.
The avocado—Whose bird-pecked fruitDangled rotten, until winds beyond usPlunged them to their guacamole death,Thudding on the roof in the early morningLike a giftless Santa ClausIn the dead of summerWhen Dad’s mistress—A friend, as he referred to her—Wore midriff Led Zeppelin T-shirtsAnd demanded to be more than his wife,As she rammed her car into ours—Two hours late to school—Until he was fed up with her torrid love,Got out of the car,And cracked her jawAs easily as the pits expelledFrom the avocados’ bellies—Seamless in its violenceAs one who loved someone so muchThat they hated them:He hated her moreThan I’d ever seen him hate Mom;That’s why she hated his girlfriend too.
The olive—Never once believedThat my short life was far moreContorted than its deformedBranches and elephant skin,But it understood why DadWould rather party with his girlfriendThan sleep in the same bed as MomA room away from ours,Where he was supposed to restLike an ax behind glassFor when nightmares cameA simple shatter could bring aboutIts warm grip to warm your hands,Rather than the chillHacking down my spine.Its sun-tanned berries—Regurgitated skins and pits on the asphalt—Exposed the tires percussiveRolling down the drivewayIn neutral, his breath geared lowKnowing that whatever it wasThat he was leaving to doWasn’t because he loved us.
And sweet pittosporum tree—Whose fallen leaves lay on the grass,Disgraced stars from nights before,Laughed with you like pork rinds crackling in oilAttempting a sneak attack on my little sister,Its sticky seed ovaries fellBroken on the windshieldOf Mom’s silver Toyota—Dad’s car in his mind—Whose windows she poundedAs the weight of her tearsHung heavy knowing thatWhen you begged somebodyTo take you back,You did it out of pain,Not out of love.
By the time I had sexAnd love had bloomed and diedDeep inside my trunk,I realized that all the treesShading our house growing upMust’ve been female,Especially the one growing weary—Rings beneath her eyesGiving away her age—Whose roots buried deepIn the house she made into a home,And the three births she wove into a family,Because they all stayed in their placeThe day that he left us.
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Photo by Rafael De Nadai on Unsplash