Have you seen the children

There were actually three.
Three kinders watched as I drew this tree.
They didn’t know what it would be,

They put down their crayons

as each began to take their shapes.

I told those three kinders,

like the oak tree living outside my house.
I asked, “How does it feel to be the tree?”

“How does it feel to be the only leaf?”

I thought I could use this idea, maybe to
help with name-calling, sharing, seasons
changing, and what comes with healing.

Knowing each one will lose the other,

I didn’t speak out loud any further,

 
I continued a talk in my mind:

The lightest thing know to gravity,
how the leaf will fall on earth;
its most silent tragedy.
Slowly, when the leaf falls, it will decay
and possibly have one more day
to move by the life of wind.
Or it becomes scooped up in a bag
amongst the rest of what was once dangling.
The tree remains cold
and waits for new season to begin
just to have more leaves again.

When you laid your full body

and we began to sleep,
I woke up to a sight of your soft hair
and forehead, your eyes closed,
with a calmest sound of you sleeping.
I wondered if you were dreaming.

For a second or two,
the moment belonged to nature.
I didn’t know how I fell asleep, but
inside our sleep and at my wake,
I was the freest.
I breathed just to breathe in;
I didn’t breathe to catch air
away from my anxiety.
I was the luckiest
for it all having found us;
only you and me.

For a second or two,
I was the lightest thing know to gravity.

But now that you are not here,

Gone is our love,

 

 
a short, short story © 2016 from Art Cure: un-alone in poetry by Mario Gabriel Adame