Flash/hybrid fiction
2 min
Tree Skin
Ching-In Chen
composed in response to Dorene Quinn's "Tree Skin"
My mother came from the trees.
I often hungered for lightning between a sea of basalt skin.
She arrived one night, a dusky form underneath a cloak which looked like it was made from dusky layers of bark.
The children had heard reports of unidentified roamers looking to sell items of value in exchange for blood so they kept their distance. They visited the soft mound multiple times a day, watching for any small movement.
It goes away if you stand upon the sandy ground, singing lowly so that no distinct words escape. You feel less urgent about flight, more like you're tending to your small open wounds near the ground, like a careful gardener listening to the vibrating floor.
They visited the mound against the tallest tree for seven days, hoping to catch any changes. Though they did not see any movement, each day the mound had made its own slight adjustment on its own somehow. They brought their papers and their graphites and sat with the mound in observation.
A body turning up to open, like a sun's stark teeth. You can feel it humming by your feet, a vibrating floor which has no end.
Seven opening mornings rolling into each hour to see what might be buried underneath. Another green voice around the corner to follow. On the eighth day, the children saw a foot peeking out like a turtle's head, slow and shy. Was there a breath?
My darkest time, not even star, waiting for my eyes to catch up. Creature's rustle dance, shaking down each tree, each leaf to the ground. To open my ear all the way up, to unpeel and unpeel. I let myself dry in my hand. I've told this story before, but it had a different beginning and end. Went a different way home from the curve.
My mother, it turned out, arrived with no memory and no tongue. She had no language for things, only a mouth which puckered and seemed to wait. She was impervious to questions or demands. The children found her to be an odd fruit and quickly lost their reverence, starting to poke, prod and increasing the intrusions on her body, as if she were just a specimen to observe.
Meeting me there, she asked, what's buried beneath skin? What are you making room for, peeling away in the woods? Cutting the vegetable, boiling the noodle and the bone, like a sleeping pod, trying not to make a disturbance, or a bucket continually pulled from in the service of dinner.
My mother served no memory and no tongue. Someone had buried her there, she said, but who was not her job to place. The children visited her and fed her soft porridge, which she alternately sipped or set out at a distance for the rabbits or tried to barter for stories about her dreams.
She looked at me deeply, identifying me for the gray sea. I watched her consider me, as if pushing away each segment.
My mother was born from bark. She peeled back each layer so slowly that we only noticed in the morning that she smelled less and less of dirt and more of sweet fruit. She drew the ants from the ground, wanting a sip, and ignoring them all as if the little black feet on her skin did not bother at all.
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