As children we are much like trees

Planted firmly in the ground,

laid gently against the support of the story we should grow into

and given on our own Earth day

Our parents carrying every intention of making the world better.

As a child we find ourselves accepted into the school

Of Once upon a time.. and we are taught

to want, to aspire, to graduate with our very own

Happily Ever After.

When we were little,

our mothers cradled us for years against the frame they intended we grow into

laid us to rest at night

and whispered bedtime stories of the adventures we ourselves would create

and we watched

waiting for “happily ever after” to be engraved with our name.


As we grow We find that the frame falls away,

 our spines like those of books ready to bear our story on their own.

 Our parents,

assuming our roots are deep enough in this fertile soil,

positive that our grasps are strong enough

Now Watch Waiting

So we begin our search, for our Happily Ever After

only to find that there are countless...

where the positivity that our roots would guide us to our own Ever After

is a lesson that there is not only one ending

but many Afters

 

I have found that I am an imperfectly perfect tree.

Like a oak tree, my name exudes strength

but my branches tell another story

each signifies an abandoned, failed, or forgotten ever after...

and none are quite happy.


I found that like my parents craved I would become

My roots have held strong

as my branches were wracked by hurricanes of emotions

struck by the lightening of an unnecessary quip

or sunken under the weight of yet another broken promise


My trunk bears the carvings of the hearts i once resided in

beneath me lay poppies concealing the blood that slipped through the cracks of

a heart broken many times over

And the land around me lays empty, echoing my solitary

my leaves like the ghosts of every unfinished fairy tale
fall in slow motion haunting my memories.
And as I stand bare, forced to face the one too many failed attempts that I believe my branches are

I realize:

If there was one happily ever after,

a tree would be but a sapling,

shooting straight up aimlessly reaching into infinity

with each branch comes a new possibility,

a new possible ending,

and while the weight of each imagined ending sinks you low in the ground,

forcing your roots to begin to surface

Look down and take this note:

A trees age and story is not told by its branches,

but by the rings within its core
Each layer a tribute to the storms we endured

but by the marks against it's trunk
Reshaping your identity

but by the depth of it's roots.

We are more than one simple "happily ever after"
More than this futile soil our parents believed in
More than the leaves that decorate our branches only a few seasons out of many.
More than our branches.

We are defined by our roots.
For that is our hold on this life.