Caleb Delos-Santos
Can I say we were just like that?
Just like a plum tree
doused in purplish, reddish leaves,
just like the one we staked into the grass patch
outside your father’s house, in that desert
dressed as a luscious city?
After all, I say we
were also masquerading,
with our fruits,
more bloated than sturdy,
ready to melt into the mouths of onlookers
only long enough
for them to point us out among the cacti
and feel justified
in pouring out their water bottles onto our silky base,
from time to time.
and with our entanglement of branches,
thicker than wool,
as if such webbing made us intricate,
and not jerry-rigged, delicate.
And I say we would have died,
even if we hadn’t tipped ourselves over
on a high noon when yet another dust storm
pressed into our bleeding bark,
on just a day
when the desert’s tides returned
and placed down just enough shards of splitting sand
between our reddish, purple leaves
to finally make us do something.
We went for it,
since, I say, we both knew
just what kind of trees can stretch out west,
can root through the padded cement and sandstone,
and age until considered mighty:
a palm, an ironwood, a Joshua tree,
not a plum tree,
not like the one we only planted upright
among a huddle of sunstruck grass
to look fantastical, unique,
just long enough
to keep our fathers happy.
And we all did smile,
even when alone, from time to time.
And I say we were beautiful,
just like the purplish leaves,
looking back just before,
just long enough to forget
how the desert howled and beat.