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Everything So Different and the Same

How pointlessly beautiful, a tree. How massive and calm and sometimes crushing and on fire. How a tree’s waving branches remind me of her hair that one afternoon, the breeze, the yellow shore. Everything so different and the same. How gentle, a tree. How full of knots and lumps and growths. How they press at her hospital window. How trees can’t cure cancer, but they still matter, and so maybe one day I can forgive myself for being as useless as they. How quiet, a tree. How peaceful. How they shade brides and graves alike. How, in ASL, the word for ‘tree’ looks like one arm trying to hold something close while the other waves goodbye.

K.C. Mead-Brewer lives in Baltimore, MD. She is a graduate of Tin House’s 2018 Winter Workshop for Short Fiction and of the 2018 Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop. For more information, visit kcmeadbrewer.com and follow her @meadwriter.

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