Day Ten

(For more information on my 'April Challenge' you can look HERE)

(46)SCHOOL DAZE

'Be like a tree,' said Miss Keeble. 'Arms stretching high, your fingers like stars. Tip-toe tall and swaying in the small wind.' Emily felt a growing stiffness in her legs and her arms creaked and cracked when she waved them and a bird was quietly nesting in her upturned hand.

(47)LOVE TO PROTEST

Tree hugger, they called him. Because that’s what he did. In protest against trees being cut down. They’re like people, he said. They live and breathe. Felling them is murder. And he gave them names and one he called Bridget and a whole night chained to her, hearing her weeping.

(48)LOVING BIG BRENDA

He was always short. Knee high to a grasshopper, his father said; precious things come in small boxes, said his mother. Blessed in other ways, said big Brenda under her breath, and she knew, for they were lovers and he climbed all over her body like she was a tree.

(49)WOODEN HEART

Hannah had a wooden heart. No, really, she did. When she was born there was something wrong and the doctor cut her open and replaced her not-working-heart with one made of wood. And the graft took and slowly through the years Hannah’s legs took root and her arms branched upwards.

(50)WHAT IT IS

Of course it's a trick. Something done to the photograph to make it look like the tree's a woman. Like in that story when the lecherous god came down and pursued a frightened girl and she, in flight, was transformed, her budding breasts hid beneath the bark of a tree.