A tree that grows three-storeys tall
“Count a measure, walk a field, in the season that comes before winter.
When people light candles, and burn evil-allegories for good.
Yet the custom brings little change to the state,
the kids are taught to draw, the revolution becomes ritual,
becomes complacent, and fades.”
I declare the extension of my departure for another year,
away from inherited faith, opting admittedly,
into processions and professions equally as deterrent.
The ideal then finds a place to subside, and falls away from grace.
Remorse lingers for the days that follow;
a great season is put to ruin,
a certain courage is lost.
A lively branch came crashing as I made my way back home.
The flowers that shed, effervescent, lingering for the remainder of the day.
It was alright—I had nothing to express, or at least off the body I possessed.
The scent lingered, I walked, attracting seldom gazes
of people carrying the same dread as my own, making their way back home.
The scent on me was of the flowers of that tree.
It grew in the season that laid in-between morbid winter, and treacherous summer;
a middle-child of the months, only fostered by the sun.
It’d started to see the neglect it’d always been in:
I grew up amongst it, when we neared adulthood, we wouldn’t meet much.
Staying in seclusion for weeks when summer left the soil parched,
and the earth begged for the pre-winter rains to come.
When the dust accumulated on the leaves expected to re-immerse into the ground,
and let the plant breathe once more.
It was also the last time when kites were flung and kept high up in the sky:
one last time before winter,
when the arid winds would nick the digits upon even a slight leverage of thread—
some caressed, harnessed by ruthless-death.
The matter had gone out of hand, I was too late perhaps.
Summer would now stay for another month-long;
I’d failed to serve upon another mourning call.
September would parch, and along with it the woods, animals, and birds,
the leaves would remain suffocated by dust;
And when September was gone,
summer extended its stay, into late-October.
I shall be held solely responsible for this cause, and for collapse of custom.
To the remainder of ashes of the Amidst perpetuate within me,
this last decade of mine is one of exile.
But the tree sustained its disregard of my fate,
crashing into me, the pre-winter spirit—the flowers fell
when I raised my gaze, up to the orange sky
as the sun came to subside,
and the relentless custom came to its futile-fruition, and fared goodbye,
for another year.