cherry blossom

The tree in my front yard has died.

My mother scolds me, hands and knees

Bloody, torn, my bare feet

Turned yellow with fungus

The tree in my front yard has died.

My dad says we can’t take it

To the new house that

It’s branches will fall off

The tree in my front yard has died.

In the winter it sits

Barren and cold with

Sharp needles for branches

The tree is my front yard has died.

In the spring I sit 

On high branches in between

The cherry blossoms the snowing petals

The tree in my front yard has died.

In the summer the petals

Turn green the branches hold

Birds that my cats catch

The tree in my front yard is dead.

When the tree in my front yard

Was alive I would sit on the branches

And it would hold my mind up

Close to the sky where the clouds

Crept inside my mind

When the tree in my front yard

Held me up my thoughts were 

Unpolluted- no, clean- no, pure,

My thoughts were it’s thoughts 

And their thoughts

The tree in my front yard has died.

I have not yet stopped thinking

The thoughts it let me borrow

I have not yet stopped thinking

Of the thoughts it told me to think