Different
Place
By Oscar S. Cisneros
Four scarred trees, imprisoned by iron bars, the knuckles
of their roots dull with scratching at cement and asphalt,
stood in a tidy, ordered row. He sat upon the steps of
his home pondering one of their leaves, freshly fallen,
its veins in a pattern that the roots of the tree could
never grow to.
Four mighty trees, branches and roots spread wide, held
the hill in place upon which they rested, their roots
clutching the soil. She sat upon the wooden steps of her
home pondering the stone she had received in the mail
from him, an antique stone that once formed the foundation
of something lasting.
Car alarms pierced the night, drowning for a moment the
arguing of a couple down the street, the crying of a little
boy, and all the other sounds of the city before it lays
down for its fitful sleep. Against this noise, he wrote,
clearly, passionately, directly, of his dreams his hopes
his vision for the future, a place looking back from which
he could see two pairs of footprints walking side by side.
Gentle rustle of wind through leaves and branches, the
swaying of giant trees flowing long and low over the occasional
twinkle of the wind chime. In silence, she read by morning
light a constant stream of scented letters arriving each
day, one for each day, each day something new, each day
the same old thing that she came here to escape from.
He wrote, she read, but they were in very different places.
He never regretted it and she never knew what she missed.
