There is no universally, precise definition of what a tree is botanically or in common language. All we know is that they’ve demanded their respect and reverence long before we were molded from their soil. Their roots make them immobile, but their leaves and branches allow them to dance with the wind, and to become as fluid as they desire.

Red Oak bark was in my mama's blood. It supplied her with a thick suckle that she drank to encompass her trunk, providing an unprecedented strength for her saplings.

Willows are the trees of sorrow. Their branches bend in impossible, unnatural forms and spruce elongated leaves that bend with them. When it rains, the Willow weeps as the raindrops from their branches fall to the ground. Its said to be a symbol of strength because despite its drooping branches, which appear to be on the brink of snapping, its trunk gives them the strength to withstand its adversity.

My father wasn't buried under a willow, but my family mourned for his fathers reverent presence. Our tears bathed the freshly mounded, clay dirt of his buried casket as we bid our final not goodbyes, but see you later's. Years we'd spent taking care of him because disease impaired his motor skills. Years our spines spent sulking as willow branches before he was even called onward. But as our heads graced the earth, we began to understand that the season was meant for loss- that Fall was prepping for Winter, and that Winter only bought death. But hooded under the wispy crown of our dismal was promise, and we surrendered to the process of consequential love and loss.

The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was destined to be eaten from. In its sacred fruit, man earned sin, and loss of grace. That forbidden fruit and that revered garden are long gone, yet I’ve eaten its remnants since birth, and am still digesting the bits of its consequences. I sin, I sin, I sin, I sin, I sin

I climbed up the Oak in my front yard many Summer evenings well into my early teen years. Jumping from branch to branch left bark lodged in my skin, and twigs and leaves stuck in my hair, but being able to perch myself on the highest branch provided me with an escape- I could sit among the clouds and fly with birds. My descent was my greatest sorrow because I had to return to my faulty ground.