City Tree

“The Reaching Tree” by Deborah Beauchamp

I’m up early, watching a woman slam herself repeatedly against a maple tree just outside my home.  She’s standing as though this tree is giving her some type of adjustment or massage.  The tree she’s pounding into has been growing on this suburban median for years.  It’s probably about the same age as my son.  I’ve surveyed it each day while I drink coffee from the kitchen. I rely on it as a stationary being in my life.  Today, in early spring, its leaves are bright green.

At first, I worry that she’s hurting it.  Then I wonder is she hurting herself?  Throwing herself against it as if she is trying to open a jammed door.  I try to google this exercise. Then I search the city parks department site.  It lists the dangers of tree abuse.  No leaning ladders, no tying a dog’s leash around the trunk.  But no mention of striking.  Everything could be fine.

The woman has been slamming this tree for a week.  Each day I join my cats who peer out the window.  They are startled by the pounding noise.  Rosie's eyes widen; Pete jumps on and off the sill.  The woman looks angry, staring east where the sun has just risen above the roofs of one-family houses. I climb back into bed.           

Still, this slamming reminds me of my mother. Her bruised arms, her black eye. My mother’s crying, her body pushed into her dresser.  Her mirror fractured into pieces. I try to help her, convince her to move but she grows roots in her house. She won’t leave my brother, dismisses Protective Services, stands guard over her belongings.  My mother growing older, thinner, her hair sticking out like a spider plant, unraveling as she falls back onto her couch.

When I wake up 2 hours later, it’s like nothing has ever happened.

I turn on the light over my nightstand. There must be someone I can call.

About the Author

Cathy McArthur Palermo’s flash fiction was recently shortlisted in The New Flash Fiction Review. Her poetry was a semifinalist for the Crab Creek Review Poetry Prize and is forthcoming in the Fall 2022 issue. Her work has also appeared in The Lily Poetry Review, The Rumpus, Jacket, Juked, Barrow Street, Gargoyle, The Valparaiso Poetry Review, Cordella, Big City Lit and The Bellevue Literary Review among others. She has an MFA from CCNY and has taught creative writing at several colleges in The City University of New York and for The Lighthouse Guild. She lives with her husband in Queens, NY.

about the artist

D. L. Beauchamp is a writer and photographer, who still feels the excitement of a haunting photograph or poem that is finished and signed with her name. Her photographs are varied and some are 'just enough' abstract to be the different vibe she is feeling.