Secrets - Elizabeth Hoyle

“There’s a story about the trees,

you know.

They were planted when

time itself was no bigger

than a bean sprout.

They grew and grew and grew

and one day

they learned a secret.

A secret that caused them to move.”

“Is that why trees

are always so close together

and why they’re everywhere in some places

and hardly anywhere

in others?”

“Yes, my child, that’s why.”

“What was the secret?”

Her laughter is as

squeaky as the porch chair

she heaves herself up from.

“Only the trees know.

One day they’ll wake up

and remember.”

I think about the forest

a few yards from

our back door

and how there are far more trees

than people in our state

and how when the wind

blows through the leaves when

they’re at their peak green,

it sounds like the ocean

brought inland.

“When they remember,

I hope they tell us.”

Bio:

Elizabeth Hoyle is from southern West Virginia. Her fiction has been featured in Dream Journal, Blind Corner Literary Magazine, and other print and online publications. Her poetry has been featured in Poke: A Journal of Kink and Erotica, The Daily Drunk, and other publications. Find her on Twitter @ERHoyle.