“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.