ISSUE NO. 6: LIONHEART

I broke my branch off the family tree by the hum of the highway. Scraping against asphalt, whittling down to a point. The branch directs me “Go east for three days and what a vision you will behold.” The reflection of the Great Salt Lake shimmering, shrinking pale as it thirsts for rain, rusted reflection in the silver station covered wagon. My foot hard pressed on the gas pedal, sacred groves of quaking aspens slowly, leaf by leaf transforming into sweet, sugary maples. Thirty-two hours of solo driving, crisscrossing plans, thinking, not thinking of next steps. New words of wisdom etched into soft bark. Tangled roots dug up and a family forsaken. Every mile further away from families are forever. Every gas station fueling the hellfire and brimstone of a certain damnation. 

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Since childhood, the mimosa tree blossomed red in the yard, blushing from the men that entered the house, heads bowed down. God’s house filled with secret handshakes and the bright green fig leaf from Adam and Eve, white and delightsome fruit. Accountable to everyone’s raised eyebrows. Subsumed into the whole, the self vanishing, raised from the dead by twelve brazen oxen, a defensive circle. The priesthood omnipotent does no wrong but there are shadows and long faces, the laying on of hands. With your dreams of mother and fears of whore, I would become neither, faceless in the crowd. No hopeful submission of obedient, modest, sealed for eternity. The weight of other branches, creaking and cracking, barely holding on.