Hello Poetry
Submit your work and get some sparkles! Create free account
Kiki-DresdenPoems
I watched Dad lift the stunted tree from a highway table, ceramic *** hot as a skillet in his palms. Its roots pressed tight against their shallow prison, a life made small, taught to accept it. He drove through the Mojave with the bonsai on his lap, branches trembling as if already afraid of him. I whispered secrets to its needles, pressed my lips to its tiny crown the way you kiss a sleeping baby. In the cabin, rain thickened the air with cedar and promise. I circled stones around the tree like friends around a birthday cake and waited for it to laugh. When its *** shattered, he said nothing. I held its dangling roots in my hands, mud soaking through my shoes, syrup cracking on my cheeks. We buried him- a little boy, I said, at the lake’s edge beside his mother whose twisted trunk leaned toward water. Dad said magic would save him, hoodoo magic, forest magic, the kind that never answers back. On the drive home I counted hoodoos in silence and watched the empty bucket roll on the back seat like a heart without a cage.
0
Aug 6, 2025
Aug 6, 2025 at 2:03 PM UTC
Juniper
I watched Dad lift the stunted tree from a highway table, ceramic *** hot as a skillet in his palms. Its roots pressed tight against their shallow prison, a life made small, taught to accept it. He drove through the Mojave with the bonsai on his lap, branches trembling as if already afraid of him. I whispered secrets to its needles, pressed my lips to its tiny crown the way you kiss a sleeping baby. In the cabin, rain thickened the air with cedar and promise. I circled stones around the tree like friends around a birthday cake and waited for it to laugh. When its *** shattered, he said nothing. I held its dangling roots in my hands, mud soaking through my shoes, syrup cracking on my cheeks. We buried him- a little boy, I said, at the lake’s edge beside his mother whose twisted trunk leaned toward water. Dad said magic would save him, hoodoo magic, forest magic, the kind that never answers back. On the drive home I counted hoodoos in silence and watched the empty bucket roll on the back seat like a heart without a cage.
Kiki-Dresden
Written by
Kiki-Dresden
32/F/Lisbon
Aug 6, 2025
Aug 6, 2025 at 2:03 PM UTC
Request permission to use this poem