A synonym for estrangement
by Rowan Tate
i was made on an acre of land where the trees
remember everything: the places we invented
under splayed branches of manzanita when we were
seven and naming the dirt, the cherry popsicle sticks we buried
like bones between its roots as we grew up and
forgot the meaning of objects, the bodies
we held against their trunks that
never came back again.
i turn fourteen and trade soil for plastic, bark
for gorilla glass, fingers for a stylus. i
read about nitrogen cycles and i walk on
sidewalks, sit on metal, the sky above me
always white and hard. when i am twenty i will
tattoo the árbol outside my window onto my left arm but i
will still get my coffee in a paper cup and
put my peanut butter jars in the trash and ask
for my receipt and i will not know
the latin names for living things.
Rowan Tate is a creative and curator of beauty. She reads nonfiction nature books, the backs of shampoo bottles, and sometimes minds.