Caravan of Hope

The Seed lays deep below the grassy field, waiting for the rain and the sun to rise and waits for the thunder and the snow to leave. She waits, and waits, one insect eating her home away at a time. The Seed can’t wait for her brother to sprout either, as they were placed at the same time. What she had remembered during her planting was that she was something the creatures called a “birch” while her brother had been called something beautiful, a “pachira aquatica.” The Seed just enjoyed the first name so much that that’s what she decided to dub him, Pachira. Pachira sat and laid, also admiring his sister's growth and wanting the two to meet. He thought “Birch” wasn’t fitting for her potential beauty so he dubbed her Betula. The meadows winds came and went. Dandelions sprout, then die, and sprout, then die again. The Seeds wished their process was as fast. Even the beautiful four legged creatures saw life and death before they got their chance to have a meaning

Then, it hits; and the vertical trajectory of life and final creation makes both seeds feel euphoric as they quickly grow their own limbs and bodies. The time of conception disappeared completely as Betula and Pachira grew and grew. Competitions to see who has the most leaves for the spring and who has the last leaf of fall were a constant joy, and seeing who could house the most feathered, winged creatures caused a stir every year. The Trees echoed with cracks, cranks, and splits so everyone could hear.

Betula starts to notice the sea of leaves and greenery they all inhabit starts drying up, one by one. The trees continue to grow and sway as the clanks and clunks get closer and closer. Soon, after many summers, Betula and Pachira have almost become the shoreline. A drop of sap runs down Pachira's side as they hear the revs grow nearer and the ground starts to shake in a way that was unnatural to them. Sap from the top ran to the bottom of the trunks. Sap wasn’t enough of a deterrent. Two legged creatures surrounded both of them, followed by larger contraptions occupied by the same creatures. These creatures would gather all around day in and day out, until they approached the siblings. A sharp and ripping feeling, a disheartening harsh vibration came from down below. The cracks in the wood from Betula rained out her fear, even as she tried not to further fear Pachira.

The fall and impact was enough to bring smoke and dirt into the atmosphere. Life seemed to be over, and Betula didn’t feel much better when Pachira joined him, side by side. From conception to inevitable yet eventual end. It came too soon, yet,

A new life would begin.

They lay beside each other still speaking through roots acknowledging the clairvoyance of this future they both knew would become them one day.

…

In what feels like a tortuous eternity, I’m brought to a place where everyone and everything looks the same. The beauty of the brown and the old, the aged and the wise, are turning into something green and small. Betulas smell and wavering presence was gone. I feel fear once again, as I hear clanking of a metal monster pushing out rows and rows of green remnants of our lives, replacing our history with what looks like the history of the creatures. One by one, steady handed and in a symbiotic manner, I watched as I came closer and closer, myself scattered throughout this unknown place. It too became my turn, and I lost myself once inside. I couldn’t help but think of Betula. Where was she and was she going through the same process. Was she being torn apart and turned into small, fragile pieces that were too thin to hold up against even the slightest rain storm, or would shrivel up in the sun when the rain had gone. Over and over, I was chipped away and chipped away until I was fully in a single box. My box wasn’t as big as the others, and I was put in a camp with similar symbols until being whisked away yet again. I moved, shuffled around and slid until I reached a screeching stop. Everyone one of us was shuffled out in large stacks. I could feel every green sliver in my box shake and rattle until I was finally hoisted up and carried down a ramp and into a new home. I longed for the simple home I had for years and years. I sat here now, in a box within another box that might’ve been within another box, I don’t know. I hear constant chatter from the creatures, and it reminds me of the way I could talk to my neighbors all day and night, crackles in the sky or chirps in the sky. Moved again. Then again. I learned to cope with it, and didn’t mind it at a certain point. The fragments of me went out everywhere. Some of my body would be pulled from a machine for “cigarettes,” and other times I’d have a large portion pulled for a “loan.” I don't understand what these things mean or are, but it made the creatures happy at my expense and I missed being whole. My final departure took the rest of myself with it, as an older creature had passed and her much younger creature earned me in what I heard was called an “inheritance.” I had found out what my “worth was” as a once beautiful and strong tree, and that was something called “twenty thousand dollars.” I was handed in full to this creature who took me home, and talked of big plans to the other there in high hopes. He spoke the way I would speak to Betula. My dreams of rising high and touching the sky, this creature shared. He spoke to the other creature with love, the way I would with Betula. In time, my creature would drink sap that made him speak very funny. He always promised to do something good with me, and that I would bring meaning, especially when on the sap. To think I could have a second chance just as this creature seemed to have thought. Everyday the promises got thicker and thicker, and the sap got heavier and heavier. He drank enough sap to make a Sugar Maple jealous. Then the voice of his other creature went away and it was just the one speaking, words that sounded like churring machines. His voice would constantly sound like rain on my once beloved tree tops. I realize I was disappearing slowly and gradually the more sap that was brought in. The creatures greed for anything but max pleasure essentially started a forest fire. I was down to my last limb, one last green leaf, all of my history and memories spread out. And I stayed with the creature, until he too had left.

In what feels like a tortuous eternity, I feel some assembly going on within my bones. I entered a square hole that rattled my core and inner's worse than any earthquake had ever done. I can still breath though. I’m cut into the same beautiful, seemingly perfect square over and over and over and over again. My circle routes are contorted and any semblance of my beauty is morphed into another. Scared, I try to stray and hold onto my bearings, but the majesty of meeting a material not seen in my home lands is riveting and fills my core with excitement. She was beautiful, slightly rippled and looked rough to the touch but smooth at the same time. Pachira would be just in awe as I feel right now. I constantly hear the word “leather” thrown around, and viewing her in all her beauty, being replicated in this camp made me feel easier. Dark, black, void of anything but filled with everything, she was beautiful and I felt some force had brought us together. My remnants, cut up and thinned out, were slowly, thoughtfully and lovingly crafted together with my new found lover and we became one. She was my beginning and my end, and I filled the missing gaps she was missing. It was a feeling I hadn’t felt since sprouting. Although I loved Leather, I slowly discovered we would travel again in the dark compartments I so had feared in the beginning. I had forgotten the honks and the turns and the sliding, but I felt more content now. I held her together and she did the same. We went all over with one another. Some of us dropped in one place, then to another only for our first conception to end in a little enigma where there were many others like me and Leather. Something was off though, because as I thought me and leather were original I found and saw so many more of us, some with bindings I couldn’t nearly describe and some as simple as us, either in brown like my bark or blue like the sky I had almost forgotten about. It wasn’t until we were picked up and shuffled around by another creature I feared would be the same as the orinaly bringer of my demise that I figured out my real purpose. I was sitting down on what I would learn would be a “desk” and I had the most enlightening, life bending moments. Stories, poetry, deep thoughts and hard aches were scribbled, drew, and penned onto my pages. I was learning of the creatures, and how they weren’t so far disconnected from me or Pachira. Stories of losing a love, which I found comfort in to realize my pain transcended to the very creature I feared. They wrote words of how a thunderstorm stemmed fear in the weak and brought beauty in the eyes of nature. They wrote of the woes of the creatures raising them. Drawings of a sunset following upon a large mass of water with birds in droves flying off my pages. Leather and I were ecstatic everyday, years and years through story after story, to see what new imagination was gonna spring onto us and become permanent, through us. Everytime we were called onto duty, I felt my left side become more lofted, harsh, and bulky. This overgrowing fear of this unknown came to an end. I had met my end and had nothing left to offer. Leather had rips in her, and was tearing at certain seems, but even as our end became inevitable, we weren’t so discouraged. A lifetime was in us. Our light and knowledge would come back again and again, as we met another little creature who resembled our original creature, and we brought new laughs, new wisdom, even if we only offered the old and already told. There was comfort in knowing we wouldn’t be forgotten. I will be forever remembered by my creature as her “small black notebook.” I felt so full and final that I had forgotten about my first love, Pachira, and knew he was destined for knowledge and love just as

I

Was