Evangeline Linens

In bloom.

there’s this cluster of trees behind the house I grew up in
maybe they’re maple, maybe oak
in elementary school I would spend hours climbing their limbs
daring myself to go higher and higher
i would carve my name, a heart shape and a girl’s name into the tree’s bark
typically at eyes height
a different week, a different tree, another heart, another girl
some 30 years later I visited these trees
wishing that my younger self had carved them lower to the ground
as they are now 20 feet up
and at my age
I’m too nervous to climb that high
- evangeline

“You have been in every way all that anyone could be.” - Virginia Woolf