Split

I've just discovered that you can heal by breaking.

An old wound can be so stubborn, especially

If it happens when you're young.

Someone might step on you, or pick you up

And try to break you in half.

But you are young, a green stick.

You break, but not all the way, and your core is

Young. Springy. Optimistic.

Forgiving.

Perhaps you don't break. Instead, you split.

Stubborn.

When you don't snap, but bend, they pull, and they twist.

You bend over backwards, and around, until they give up and leave you on the ground.

And there you are in one piece.

And you're not broken, but from there on, you grow in two directions, in the shape of a Y.

And your mind holds on to the question,

It becomes one word; “why?”

And each end of you is, by the other, denied.

Each side, still green inside, they fork away from each other, but still upward, toward the sun, toward the light.

Grown, yet growing still, you get taller, but you still want answers.

And the sky is so far away.

And you can't bring about the relief of rain.

and you don't know when those cruel hands will return again.

And you relish the memory for all of it's pain

And you think to yourself, if I had bent further?

If perhaps, to begin with, I were the right shape?

If I bore fruit? Had a different name?

If I had sprouted in the meadow, the clearing,

And not in the shade?

And you keep thinking you are the one who's to blame.

And in their absence, you grow. You grow in two ways. Two directions.

Slowly, the circumstances in which you were born cease to matter at all

You, from an acorn, are strong.

You, saved by the fact that the squirrel forgot.

Saved even by drought, by burial, by refusing to rot.

And saved by innocence. By greenness. By softness. By naivete.

Saved by splitting, for two branches, for twice as many leaves, saved by the questions and varying perspectives, twice the perches for birds to sit and to sing.

Saved by everything.

For all the trials, the acorn, the green stick, it grows and becomes a tree.

The Y becomes tall, but lower-case.

The question “why” becomes lower-stakes.

The sticks and leaves that fall don't make or break you anymore.

But the memories remain, they still ring through your core. Your tree-rings tell the story. The great Y.

The one branch that veers off to the side.

That lower branch, easy to climb, perfect for sitting, for hanging a swing, or hammock,

Or perhaps some kind of animal trap.

This branch, the one that still doesn't quite accept.

The one that questions why.

Even after all this growth and all this time.

This branch, it gives you this memorable shape,

A shape after which you are named.

Yes, you think of those cruel hands again and again.

With a kind of acceptance for the weevil-like questions, you come to expect them to never return.

But then return they do.

You hold your breath at their unmistakable footsteps. The dry twigs, snapping beneath their boots as they draw closer to you.

And tall as you are, now, they look up at you,

And see only a thing they couldn't break.

They see not the upper branches of the Y.

They see the place where they converge, the wound from which they emerge, the chalice, the belly of a glass of wine. And they think they may as well try again.

They couldn't let the green stick win.

They hook their arms around the lower branch and they swing. They cast their full weight up and down, out and in.

This time, there isn't such an elastic bending.

This time, there is a creaking, akin to the sound of a house that is settling. A house with good bones being pushed by a hurricane's wind. And the branch, the “why,” begins to give.

It gives way. It falls.

With but one man to hear its call.

It lands on deaf ears.

Triumphant, the man walks off with his haul,

Once a limb, now a log, frayed on one end,

Splayed, sprung like guitar strings, like broken heartstrings.

Tonight this piece of you will keep him warm.

Tonight, only tonight, just once, and for once, it's for once and for all.

Tonight, just tonight, and never again.

It's over, the question

“Why” is finally answered.

The answer is this:

The cruel hands take and break because they can't provide. Without theft, they are deprived. The hunter, without murder, cannot stay alive.

A cold blooded man still needs warmth to survive.

And you know this, you oak tree,

You have wisdom, even as sap weeps

From the old wound made fresh again and left behind.

Even through the pain, you feel the weight as it falls away. The Y has splayed and split, leaving you with the shape of a capital I.

With roots that run deep and a crown up on high.

You know now that you can suffer losses, and, when appropriate, break, and you still have enough green-ness within you to sway.

For all the cruelty– you are relieved by the breaking away. Without the dead weight

you stand taller. Closer than ever to the sunlight, the rain, the bright light of day.