The Air You Breathe
by Kayleigh Marinelli
When I died my mother turned me into a tree. My body lit afire and my ashes were concealed in a biodegradable pot along with soil and a seed. My mother was always a woman concerned with protecting the environment, saving it for the children of the future. That’s why she didn’t bury me in a casket. A tombstone doesn’t speak back to you when you consult it.
Trees whisper. They inhale the wind through the tips of their leaves and exhale out into their roots, feeding the earth with oxygen. An ephemeral moan emits from them when they sway, almost as if they are trying to tell you that they too know what it feels like to be in mourning.
The day I first sprouted from the ground, kissed by the rays of an ever-loving sun, I longed to be held by the person nearest to me. But I was surrounded by the forest. By a low murmuring of desire that lingered between the lumps and vines. How do you scream out for those who long to hear you when you have lost your voice?
Have I been reborn, or is this a forest full of lingering phantoms stuck in the process of photosynthesis?
Perhaps the story The Giving Tree, was always more tragic than we were led to believe. The tree was alive, once. And now in death wishes to give and give until even the afterlife has nothing left to offer it. I, just a seedling, have little to give rather than a modicum of thoughts that are as fleeting as the wind that caresses me. Each day that passes I begin to forget more of the life I had before breaking ground.
I remember the feeling of my dog’s fur, running through my fingers at just the right interval to both tickle and comfort me. I remember leaving my window open during the summer and bugs would perch themselves on the ledge. I would never let them inside. I remember eating chicken nuggets every Friday, a family tradition that a nutritionist would disapprove of. But my father, or perhaps it was my brother, loved them too much to care about the long-lasting effects too much breaded chicken had on the body.
Bodiless now I laugh at the thought.
My mother comes to water me often. Water helps you grow big and strong, she would say. She hums a low melancholic tune that she would never utter had I been alive. When did she learn how to wear sadness so well? Tears splatter my soil more often than water.
I wanted to reach out and gather my mother into my arms. Tell her, don’t cry, I am the air you breathe now, and I will always be with you. Without a mouth or vocal cords, I am stunned into an eternal silence and suddenly I understand why people are afraid to enter the woods, because we are haunted.
When I died my mother turned me into a tree. My body lit afire and my ashes were concealed in a biodegradable pot along with soil and a seed. My mother was always a woman concerned with protecting the environment, saving it for the children of the future. That’s why she didn’t bury me in a casket. A tombstone doesn’t speak back to you when you consult it.
Trees whisper. They inhale the wind through the tips of their leaves and exhale out into their roots, feeding the earth with oxygen. An ephemeral moan emits from them when they sway, almost as if they are trying to tell you that they too know what it feels like to be in mourning.
The day I first sprouted from the ground, kissed by the rays of an ever-loving sun, I longed to be held by the person nearest to me. But I was surrounded by the forest. By a low murmuring of desire that lingered between the lumps and vines. How do you scream out for those who long to hear you when you have lost your voice?
Have I been reborn, or is this a forest full of lingering phantoms stuck in the process of photosynthesis?
Perhaps the story The Giving Tree, was always more tragic than we were led to believe. The tree was alive, once. And now in death wishes to give and give until even the afterlife has nothing left to offer it. I, just a seedling, have little to give rather than a modicum of thoughts that are as fleeting as the wind that caresses me. Each day that passes I begin to forget more of the life I had before breaking ground.
I remember the feeling of my dog’s fur, running through my fingers at just the right interval to both tickle and comfort me. I remember leaving my window open during the summer and bugs would perch themselves on the ledge. I would never let them inside. I remember eating chicken nuggets every Friday, a family tradition that a nutritionist would disapprove of. But my father, or perhaps it was my brother, loved them too much to care about the long-lasting effects too much breaded chicken had on the body.
Bodiless now I laugh at the thought.
My mother comes to water me often. Water helps you grow big and strong, she would say. She hums a low melancholic tune that she would never utter had I been alive. When did she learn how to wear sadness so well? Tears splatter my soil more often than water.
I wanted to reach out and gather my mother into my arms. Tell her, don’t cry, I am the air you breathe now, and I will always be with you. Without a mouth or vocal cords, I am stunned into an eternal silence and suddenly I understand why people are afraid to enter the woods, because we are haunted.