Taking 500,000 Photographs of a Dogwood Tree

They say pick a tree to grow old with, yet leaves still gather like withered lives around you, and even that tree—once rooted fast in your memory— now falls into the mire among its rotting children, remaining only to be seen across the frenzied moments of this search for “a life stripped away.” The dogwood blooms droop like sleeping children over the water, and the twigs droop like it hurts to carry them. The roots of the trunk spread out like Papa when he walked too drunk. It’s branches spindly and knobby as his twiggy arms gorged on bursitis. Liver stuck out like the front of an 85’ Silverado. Legs like Marlboro 100s but this one woman; she takes photos at funerals to show them to the family, so there’s Papa all folded up like a paper plane that didn’t fly far enough. Polaroids ain’t useful. This is no time to be useful. This is time to sing badly in the woods and scare deer. JL is a queer poet living in Georgia. Currently, most of the poems they write are about Yugioh cards and Youtube videos.