There’s a bridge in Brooklyn where I’d like to plant an apple tree.
Not right on top of it, of course.
That wouldn’t work so well. The air is certainly too thin or maybe filled with toxins.
Grass doesn’t grow on cement suspended sky-bound, anyhow.
No, instead, maybe I’d just like it to be somewhere nearby.
Where the drivers will pass, and for a moment just enjoy the color of its leaves and the red of its apples, that would certainly find neon lights to attach on to.
In its bark, as it’s beginning to grow, I’d carve your name with a pocket knife.
Like the one that you used to keep on you in case anyone tried to come in between you and your tribe.
But more often than not, used only to cut away stray branches that hung over the spots you used to hammock, and watch as the sunset.
While high on the smells of the leaves that would fall to your feet, and another green that I won’t focus on this time around.
As the apple tree in Brooklyn grew, I like to dream that it would entirely engulf your name.
You’d be there, watching, as a silent protector of the city that used to call mine.
When light was bright and The Public wasn’t as poisonous.
Eventually, I’d like to visit that tree.
Years later.
When it’s full of fruit from the Earth.
To hold onto one of those apples and take a bite as I walked the streets as they once again bustle with busy-bodies that feel their time is more valuable than the Suns.
To leave the core but take a seed or two, and plant one.
Somewhere in London.
And keep one in my skin.
So wherever I ended up, we’d still be close.
So whenever I die, I’d grow to be an apple tree, much like you.
.
.
.
Micah Mabey
