Archive for May, 2011

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THE MOST BEAUTIFUL TREE: By Jennifer Jackson

Tuesday, May 31st, 2011

There is a maple tree at the edge of the forest.  The only one the eye can see along the careless line of evergreens.  Its massive trunk shoots skyward, taller than most other trees.  The branches are like coffee cans, large and round.  Leaves hang like vibrant umbrellas and, when the wind blows, it shakes its green garb joyfully.  It is the most beautiful tree along the careless line of evergreens.
*
The maple tree of summer awakes after winter sleep.  Trunk once proud, is slightly bent as though winter forced it to kneel and its branches are not as thick or high up.  The bark looks chipped and worn down.
A spigot is attached to the tree, Frankenstein’s bellybutton, jutting out.  A plastic bucket sits underneath hungrily collecting sap.  Dripping can be heard over birds in nearby trees.  No birds make their home here now.
**
Buckets on the spigot alternate colors by sets of hands.  Long, thin branches whip in little breeze.  Roots become tangled, dry.  The leaves aren’t sprouting very fast and the trunk now bears a strange tattoo crudely cut into a heart with initials.  Initials the tree knows nothing of, initials it must carry.  Hands switching the colored pails also created its newest scar.
***
A truck is crashed into the tree yesterday, instantly killing the driver and passenger.  The man and woman were going home from their daily sap-collecting trip when their tire blew unexpectedly, forcing them off the road. 
On closer inspection, the police found a maple syrup spigot wedged in the tire’s rubber.  They are still baffled. 
****
There is a maple tree at the edge of the forest.  It has a massive trunk, large branches, and glossy, black leaves.  There is a slight ding in the bark that almost looks like a heart but otherwise, it is perfect.  It is happy.  It is the most beautiful tree among the careless line of evergreens.

———————-

©2011 Jennifer Jackson

 Jennifer Jackson lives in Wisconsin with her once-southern husband and has been writing for fifteen years across many genres.  When she isn’t writing, she does beadwork and plays video games.

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SHEARS: By Conan Young

Monday, May 30th, 2011

George decided, after twenty-two years, five months, and four days, to get a haircut.  Not that his hair was messy or unkempt.  Tradition required that he keep it washed and free of tangles.  Nor was it conspicuous in public, since he kept his long braids coiled under a turban, as did generations of his ancestors.

“My own brother.  How could you turn your back on God?”

“It’s not about that,” said George.

“You’re ashamed of your own heritage, aren’t you?  Just like before!”

“Sanji, I’m sorry, but I must.  This is my decision.”

George wasn’t always George.  He was once Jagdish Singh, at least before the shooting.  However, not even a legal name change could mollify the paranoid stares he often received from fellow New Yorkers.  All it took was one incident to shatter any naïve impressions of American tolerance.

“Go back to Afghanistan!” the gunman had screamed.  George struck the pavement hard.  Yet the blood on his clothes wasn’t his own.  Sanji had shoved him aside and taken the bullet.  It had been a few months after September 11, 2001.

“I saved your life.  You owe me!” said Sanji.

“Tell me.  What’s to stop it from happening again?”  George had already unwound his turban, removed his hair comb, and set aside his decorative knife.  “You think it matters to those Islamophobes whether you’re Sikh or Muslim?  We all look the same.”

“So you just give up?  Abandon your faith?”

George slammed the drawer where he kept the shears.  “When you got shot, where was God?  When those hijackers murdered three thousand people, where was God?  Those hijackers believed they were instructed by God.”

“Then you agree with them?”  Sanji looked on with shame as George held up the shears, but there was little he could do once his older brother’s mind was made up.

“No.  God has abandoned me.  I must leave it all behind.”  The blades snapped shut.  George’s long braids fell to the floor.

Sanji shook his head.  He stood with his back to the window.

“All these years I’ve stuck by your side,” Sanji said and slowly unwound his turban, the same white turban he was wearing the day he got shot.  Fresh blood still flowed from the bullet wound in his forehead and trickled down his face like tears.  “But you would rather forget me.  Betray my memory.”

“Sanji, wait.”

George reached out to take his brother’s hand, but Sanji faded like the morning fog.

The sunset was grey as a cloudy day.  George laid his cut braids and gathered artifacts on Sanji’s grave, all part of the past.

“I’m sorry.  I had no other choice.  Will you forgive me?”

But nobody answered.  Not even God.

_____________________________

©2011 Conan Young

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