Tree

I.
I don’t remember when I retreated from the sun.
It was gradual, in increments, little incidents
drawing me further and faster into darkness.
I didn’t realize until the morning
I opened my mouth, words came out,
and nobody glanced toward me.

I hated this prison, this half-self-made cage.
I could see, I could smell, I could hear --
but I could not do.
I wouldn’t let myself. I’d be exposed.
People might see
what the mirror reflected so glaringly.
But what do mirrors show
but truth?
It’s our eyes that lie.

Once, when someone asked me
what animal I’d most like to be, I dropped my gaze
and said a maple tree, tall, thick-trunked,
steady branches spreading wide and up.
A tree is in the background; a tree
observes and whispers what it sees
and doesn’t care that no one looks its way.

II.
I leaned against the slick white bark
and listened for the footsteps of a no-longer-ghost.
It would be so easy, so fitting,
to tuck another note in the crevice of a branch
and fade to gray;
to the girl I’m used to being,
the girl I used to be.
She’d hide. She’d slip away
behind a knot of ferns and lie
perfectly still, dirt-colored clothes
blending in.

III.
There are no mirrors here.
Only saplings, leaves and stones,
wind breathing through the branches and shaking spinning seeds
that catch in my clothes and my new shortened hair
and my upturned palms holding nothing
but air.

Seeds are promise, seeds are keys,
and this cage door’s swinging open
and the bars are breaking down
and I clutch tight to the curve of the bark beneath my hand

and step free.

IV.
I’m in plain sight. I’m standing in the sun.
I’m waiting by the side of a black-and-white tree
and I refuse to fade away.