When Roots Whisper, Branches Answer

I come from soil that remembers

the weight of footsteps,

voices pressed into earth like seeds.

My grandmother’s silence,

my father’s hands stained with ink and work,

my mother’s laughter scattered like pollen —

they keep me steady.

Their shadows wrap around my ankles,

roots that refuse to loosen,

even when I dreamed of deserts,

even when I prayed for oceans.

Beneath me:

a map of hidden rivers,

stories unspoken but felt,

grief that fermented into strength,

songs half-forgotten yet alive in the marrow.

Roots are stubborn archivists;

they keep what I might have thrown away.

They hold the truth tighter than love,

and when I lean down,

pressing my ear to the soil,

I can still hear them whispering my name.

Above me:

branches lean into sky,

stretching toward suns I have not seen.

They crack in storms,

lose whole limbs in winter,

yet still they reach,

open-mouthed, hungry for light.

They are not afraid of breaking.

They are not afraid of emptiness.

They scatter green across the horizon,

writing my possibilities in the air.

Sometimes I climb them like ladders,

each leaf a future I could still claim,

each fork a path I almost took.

Sometimes I swing from them

as though I were still a child,

believing the sky could hold me.

Sometimes I simply rest beneath their shade,

content to watch the slow work of becoming.

Roots whisper: remember.

Branches answer: become.

And in the fragile body between them —

this trunk that is my own living —

I balance,

suspended in the ache of both.

I am grounded,

yet always yearning,

a tree that is not finished

learning how to grow.