“Show me yours” (8/30) – NaPoWriMo 2014

Tell me about yourself.
Tell me your best childhood memory.
Tell me your worst.
Tell me when you first fell in love.
Where you had your first kiss.
Where you had your first good kiss.
Tell me if you can still taste that kiss on your lips when you lie awake at night.

Tell me when you first knew what heartbreak feels like.
Tell me when was the last time you felt it.
And if you believe that now you’ve felt it once you can still feel it
Just a tiny little bit
All the time.

Tell me about your favourite tree to climb.
And how old you were when you realised climbing trees wasn’t cool.
And how old you were when you realised that you were wrong
And that climbing trees was the coolest thing that has ever happened
And that damned if you’d ever grow up.

I still climb trees.
I still feel heartbreak.
And I can still taste her kiss on my lips
Just like the first time.

09/04/14
© 2014 Bonnie Calderwood Aspinwall

Tree

A blue dress stands out against the moving leaves.
Reaching up she holds a limb and swings her feet,
Catching a branch with her legs she pulls herself higher,
She laughs as she climbs.

A moving world of green,
A thousand shades,
Leaves brushing her face,
Twigs catching her clothes.

Twenty feet below,
Infinity above,
She climbs on,
Seeming to dance as she twists and turns,
Whirls and spins,
Joy of life,
Happiness and freedom,
Carefree and light as the wind and the leaves.

Thirty feet up,
There’s no stopping her now,
She knows what she’s doing,
She’s not afraid.
The height is nothing to her,
She needs to breathe the air the birds breathe,
The fairies are calling her,
Guiding her to the top,
And she herself becoming more fairy-like the higher she gets.
A sprite, dancing,
A brownie, weaving,
A nymph, a dryad,
An elf, spiralling through the leaves.

Forty feet, she’s almost there,
A breath of wind curls through her yellow hair,
Her laughter tinkling through the air,
Her voice joins the birdsong.

Fifty feet! She’s there at last!
She bursts through the canopy,
Arms waving,
Face upturned to the sky,
She’s free,
A smudge of gold in a world of green.

14/09/2006
© 2014 Bonnie Calderwood Aspinwall