It’s a bit like climbing up the stairs to the very top of the tallest building in your neighborhood. You do it alone, completely alone, after working at some cafe a mile from your house. You count out your tips, put on your headphones, and slip into your own world as the humans, the families, the students, all become some sort of impromptu choreography. They are all silhouettes and so are you.
You take the long way home because you are tired and you don’t feel like crossing the bridge alone and hopping the fence. The tall building taunts you, leering. You meant to climb to the top with someone else, with anyone else, but today you are alone.
It’s thirty six floors. It’s the second-largest-something-or-other’s-wayward-dedication-to-knowled­ge, but regardless of the history, it’s made of stone and it’s enormous, so obviously, you must climb it. You are alone.
You walk inside. You do not belong there, and the maintenance man looks at you strangely, but you realized a long time ago that being slight of stature and pretty and female lets you get away with a lot more than you should, and besides, you are a silhouette now anyway.
Climb the stairs. It takes an hour or so. Each step feels the same. Look around, tie your hair up. It’s getting so so so long, you’ve taken to braiding it most days. Think about kissing boys. Think about ******* boys. Think about the time you kicked a boy’s heart in the teeth as a casualty of running away from everything else. Climb faster. Think of anything else. Think of loneliness. Think of sandwiches, think of dancing, think of Greek poetry. Take a rest. Climb. Think. Climb. Climb.

The top is three glass windows and two offices and one library. Sit on the windowsill and think of how small your hands are. Tie your hair up again. Headphones off. It is your nature to want too much, so by the time you get to the top, you wonder about the roof.

As scared as I was,
I remember climbing my first mountain.
Then there was a second
That wasn't as demanding.
The third one was a task
Because it was much too rocky to be easy,
And the fourth one was intimidating
As much as it was frightening.
The fifth one was intriguing
And the six was the most humbling
Experience up until then.
The seventh, I thought, would be my last one
But alas,
I'm climbing an eighth mountain.

I fell in love
Climbing up the first one,
I took a chance
Climbing up the second.
I knew it wouldn't be easy
But I took a chance with the third,
And I wanted to go higher
And higher after the fourth.
I wanted something different
From the fifth,
And I very much enjoyed
The smooth scaling of the sixth.
I was too careless
Thinking I had enough experience for the seventh,
But I learned my lesson,
And not taking it easy on this next trip

And then I too
am part of the silence
that casts its post-sunset stillness
throughout this swamp white oak's great spread.

It seems as though even the hive of honeybees
and the nearby nest of baby birds
have stopped to admire
the feeling of the world
tilting on its axis; sinking through space.
We all gaze further upwards,
those bees and birds and I.
And nestled in the remaining twigs above,
is the shockingly finite dance
of the leaves... of the stars.

The shadows that hang from the top-most branches
cast their way down around me
and coat their way all over the ground, making it
easy to forget the height—
the ultimate suspension. Because
born within my skin
is a swamp white oak,
stretching its branches through the
grey matter in my mind,
over-taking and over-whelming.
At the end of it all is me:
a tiny little acorn laid
by an impossible evolution
of people into trees.

Every cell becomes leaf and
the heart a listening ear. Amongst
the chorus of the frogs,
the owls, the coyotes—
the chorus of the woods around—
is that shift
so revered.
The shift of the Earth.
The Earth tilting
on its axis.
It’s time to admit that the maps and
man’s little green boxes there,
are nothing but products
of a continually
diminishing temper... showing
that when this swamp white falls,
it won’t just be a wood
that’s finally left barren.
It won't just be a body
left emptied and charred.

Please, I think, as the bark gets flimsier
and flimsier
beneath my feet. As the wind gets fiercer
and fiercer
howling in my ears. *Please. Let this lone acorn
standing here
sprout into something.
Let a swamp white oak
be seen.