Silk Magnolia

False proclamations of rain speak from a magnolia tree. It’s just the ice melting off the fibrous leaves. On my walk between the trees.

I trace the mortar between the stones that were carried and laid long before me. Brown with age and covered with a frigid moss. My mother would tell me those stones were laid as part of the New Deal. The weight they bear of a country’s burden is now labeled as depression.

January is my breaking month. It had been for a long time. My roots dig heavy in the cold, hard Earth in search for water, only to be saturated by frozen rain and my tears.

I feel for the frozen magnolia tree. The blooms sweat out their compassion in the summer only to be harassed by the desolate cold. Which brings me here, on my walk between magnolia trees.

I feel the rigid leaves from a low hanging branch; smooth, crystalized surfaces that transport me back to my childhood. Sweet honeysuckle air, and the wildflowers gracing my bare, sunburnt skin. Hate formed in my heart in that place in time. But like the ice dripping from the branches, I had to thaw out a beating admiration of a distant life I still call my own.

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