birch ovenbird The paper_birch is impaled on spikes in an old christmas_tree stand in the living room. My mother is upstairs. I shout, “You forgot to water the tree!” and she says, “Don’t worry, it will perk up,” but I’m not sure. The bark is sallow, the leaves are withered. I carry jug after jug of water from the kitchen to moisten the severed stump. I fill a basin the size of a child’s swimming pool and beg capillary action to function. I place my palms on curls of bark that feel like peeling skin, I trace a line to the wound where roots should be. Sap runs from the stump into the basin. I whisper a small incantation and dip my fingers into the water, bring cupped hands to my mouth, taste vague sweetness and a cold that leaves pain behind my eyes. The tree speaks to me in memories, picking one from the brambles of my mind, and handing it to me in the form of a picture: I am seventeen, set loose in the Canadian north with a whole pack of feral_misfits. I have done away with traditional clothes, forgoing the squeak of cheap polyester for a ring of birch bark, which makes a rather striking top. I have managed to squeeze myself into it and I am suddenly more tree than flesh. A smile that cracks the usual dolor of my face suggests that I don’t mind this transformation at all. I am alive, my body wrapped in the cast off shell of a being older than time. I can feel the mycelial voice of the forest_floor speaking in living braille beneath my feet. There is more oxygen in my lungs than I know what to do with. Have I ever truly breathed before this moment? No. Not fully. Not in a way that calls every molecule of this life into the interstices of my marrow. It’s been many years since I draped myself in the rough cortex of the forest and laughed at the antics of my own wild soul, playing in the sunshine. But it wouldn’t take much, these days, to see me return_to_the_woods, where I would joyfully throw the cotton threads I wear into a river and make a shawl of feathers and spider webs to wrap myself in. I could live on moss and acorns (I have lived on less) and know that my worth depends on nothing but the capacity to take a breath…and another…and another. 250626 what's it to you? who go blather from