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My sister’s hair, honeyed from the hair salon, fell between us. The tips of it brushed the
menu we shared. We sat side by side since the booths were comically huge, like everything else at The Cheesecake Factory in Pasadena. I almost tucked her hair behind her ear, my older-sister instincts rearing up even though we weren’t kids anymore and hadn’t been close for years. Her lunch invitation hadn’t been unexpected. It was the summer of 2007. I’d traveled from Florida where I was in graduate school to our home state of California to be the maid of honor in her wedding. The event was three days away and there was so much left to do. Tanning bed appointments, mani-pedis, a champagne brunch, bridesmaid dramas I’d been tasked with diffusing via flip phone, eyebrows to be waxed into thin perfect lines. After we ordered our salads, I thought we would talk about those things. Instead, she stared straight ahead out a picture window that faced onto Colorado Boulevard and roped me into helping her reconstruct the plot of One Magic Christmas. It was her favorite holiday movie as a kid. A father shot to death on Christmas Eve. His children driven off a bridge into an icy river. A mother grieves. The angel Gideon appears. “I need to tell you something,” she said after the waiter left our salads. I perked up, wondering if it had something to do with her fiancée. His favorite things were green smoothies and making fun of ugly people and he always pointed out when my sister had seconds. I put down my fork, hoping for a called-off wedding. She was a quietly intelligent nursing student. A hot girl who had been getting into Jesus. She was only twenty-two. trigger warning: homophobia and then, it was my second time hearing “the l slur” my father was born from a barber shop to the left
of my grandmother’s laundromat. he grew up and grew back and married the hair comb his father and his father’s father wielded, everyday, my nana to be drove him up their holler in an old brown buick —always late, always to pick up my mother. scolding him for his tardy slip, my nana to be wore a cross around her neck: held it, prayed to jesus every morning, lunch, and night. she told me once that she wasn’t irish, she wasn’t catholic. 23 and Me reports she was wrong. 25% ireland, 75% bible belt, I wonder: are You what you grow from? my first daycare was a sunday school. then i was grape juice and crackers. my father dreamt of walking in that church, in my wedding. no one prepared us
for what was to come. our brain, body, and spirit now changed. where curiosity once lived, burdens now lie. was it for the better? a bird in its cage
cannot fathom the ache felt by a girl desiring to create i try and i try ponder and feel peel a tangerine but i still don’t feel real is there something inside of me? a messy note tainted with blood “you could do something bigger than this” repressed from exploding unbeknownst to knowing i am not glowing should i keep flowing? when I die
bury me as a tree grind my bones into the finest ash mixed with fertilizer into that of the weeping willow tree when i die bury me as a tree so i can be reborn to provide shade for the tired passerby shelter for the homeless home to nest wandering robins and swallows and the rope swing that decorates my branch - dad’s gift to his little girl when i die bury me as a tree build a bench underneath my willow curtains to let the elderly couple sit they reminisce their love on their 56th wedding anniversary when i die bury me as a tree my trunk hopes to be carved with hearts and initials of young lovebirds unsure of their own fate after sharing their first kiss under the weeping willow tree |