Fruit Tree Blossoms

Late morning, the sky is thick white. Can't look at it directly. Bugs and birds make tons of noise. I'm not wearing shoes. I tighten the string from my red cowboy hat, you know the one, around my jaw. That is the jaw, isn't it? Not my chin, not my neck either.

Friendship is nice, isn't it? Comforted by ink at an unknown distance. At the source, another pile of bones and skin hunches over a piece of paper and stares at you through the lines. A caged creature peering at you from inside your head.

Speaking of my head, there's a song in it. I got a song in my head. It's about trees falling. One tree falls against another tree. Two trees fall against a third. I split my thumb open trying to write the music. See? For a girl with so many thumbs in her songs, you'd think I could get my head to hit the strings right. Maybe I need a drum. Or a comb. My hair's an ocean.

The first time my mom saw someone die, his blood got all over her. She heard an explosion and ran to it. Inside this smoke filled little store a man she knew through her dad was lying on the floor. He sprayed blood at her as she pressed his chest. The killer watched for a few minutes undetected before leaving the store. She told the store man he'd be fine. He thanked her then died. She says not everyone smiles and cries on the same day.

These trees smell good. Trees are muscular flowers sort of. One day they'll die and become fruits. Sad. Doesn't that make you want to throw up and cry? Flowers turn to fruit and if not eaten when they're most juicy and beautiful, they shrivel up and die, get stepped on and covered with blood from someone's head hitting a rock when they slip and fall. Then flies come and eat the decay. The vomit and the fruit and the body die on top of each other, lovers poisoned by their most practical instincts: to love, to smell, to taste. Poetry everywhere vomits on itself. It's happening now. It's already happened. It's happening again. And here I am picking flowers because they're shaped and colorful. I pull their bodies apart with my curious fingers, delighted by their flesh as it dies in my hands.

The flower dies and I keep my bones inside me, all my organs, most of the skin. My eyeballs come out again and again, but there's no end in sight. Soak me pruney then squish me. Here I remain. If I can't feel the sun burning a hole in my shoulder, I will consider myself invisible. I'll swim back and forth in the pond, tumble down the hill. I'll set up blackberries so people fall. Romantic, isn't it? The ghost luring hunters and lovers with fruit and wormy things.

I hope you take this paper with you where you're going. Think about the flowers and realize you're not just killing animals, but you're walking into your future. There'll be flowers and berries and blood. If you find yourself dreaming. Think of hands. You can use them to rip things apart, but know that in order to take off clothes, something must remain underneath. This is the food for the flies, sliding down a muddy hill to the edge of a pond, where it gets shoved into the water by careless whispers and drunk sex. It sinks to the bottom, grass pokes holes through it where it lands then ties itself in a knot so that you're shoe-laced to its body. You'll be pulled apart, flower, caressed, smelled, and pressed.


by Daiana Feuer