Looking at it, you, speckled splattered and steeped in sunlight dancing across your shoulders landing on the bridge of your nose. Freckles of the sublime spattered silently soaking your skin. Tired, old, you bear the weight of the girl in denim, leaning back into the arms that have given so much, already. Creaking and groaning you hold her them everyone for years the history. The last unicorn, ochre dusted regal in your aloneness. Medallioned medaled “Do Not Sit or Climb on this Tree” last of your kind, one of. So of course you are sat on climbed on pulled on romped around gossiped under, the shelter.
I imagine your branches as a quivering Atlassian lattice, muscles sore tired sinewy and shuddering with breath. Clutching to native land with ancient fingers one foot in the grave, in the after. From all over locals and kooks alike we drop our boards and jungle gym across your living room with childish glee. Young yes adults only some, the couch cushions are ruffled and we do not care if the floorboards break because this would be such a great picture for Instagram make sure you get the sunset because it is aesthetic and the surfboards too and the bikes capture Isla Vista so that bitch from highschool thinks and your cousin too show them yes you will show them how much you are enjoying yourself here in this tiny town with too many liquor stores and not enough earth to hold those that first called it home.
But you are still
there, still holding firm, even as bits
and pieces of you are cracked off and lost to
the tide, or carried far from your bed and landing. Somewhere.
I am here, breathing your breath and listening to your quiet murmurs, wind-aided. I sit across, watching your rustling shifting discomfort as yet another weight nestles himself against your chest, curling up with you to watch the sun go down and ignoring your veteran’s pins clearly begging to be left alone. Settling in to the new burden, creaking and groaning you hold him them everyone for years the history.
Colonized by kids in Birkenstocks, pushed to the very limits of where you might exist as the wind and rain devour your foundation. The drunk ZBT boys do not help, stumbling through and swallowing all, your land is taken.
In search of a new garden, you escape the solidity of your mother’s, new soil awaits. The cosmos, glittering with man’s incomprehensibles and a billion smiling winking stars.
