Roots

Chèna Williams

Poetry

I was a thing that grows.

And for the first few years, I was cared for. Morning and night and morning again gentle hands touched me softly placed me in the sun, provided me with water, carefully picked out my soil, but they didn’t stick around.

See, the thing about things that grow is that we simply never stop growing. We either grow or we die, we are dying the moment we are not being cared for.

I was dying every second.

Morning and night and morning again and mornings were hopeful but disappointing.

Disappointing when a cloud hid Her mighty glow, disappointing when snowflakes kissed my forehead, disappointing when the rain pelted my branches and the wind stole my blooms and the darkness of midnight lasted for months.

I was battered and starved and wilting. For years, wilting. My head lolled on the ground, my arms shriveled, my blossoms knew no nectar, my leaves knew no vibrancy, my stems knew no certainty.

I was no longer a thing that grows, I was no longer a thing at all. I was a whisper of a thing that once was.

My body became small. My name became empty. My identity became l i f e l e s s.

And when there was just one last whimpering breath on my lips, I felt something. A stretch from beneath me, within me. I was dead but my roots were flourishing.

They stretched for the damp soil, they reached for the memories of nurture, they grasped those of pain and everything I had weathered and they forced me upward, refused to let me die.

We cannot let you perish, they said. All we know is survival.

So,

I would brave the weather. I would soak up the pleasant moments. I would face the sun, my beacon, as She travelled across the sky, and I would let my roots lift me because that is what growing things do.