Picaroon - Issue #11 - November 2017

Ali Jones
Watch What You Eat
She never believed her mother, and alveoli flaring,
inhaled the seed, lodged it in the casket of her chest
until one day it rooted, and she finally emerged,
no longer barren, germinating, the seed
snaking nutrients from the coils of her veins;
it sought light, reaching for the anglepoise
that perched on her desk beneath the window,
drinking her from the inside, pushing upwards
to break through. One day when she woke,
her lips had sprouted leaves in bud,
her hair a crown of twigs, arms branching upwards,
star seeking. It did not seem strange to consider
heartwood darkening her spine, outer layers hardening
to textured gowns, at each season another layer
bedding in, armouring her against the world,
a xylem danced beneath the widening sky;
at the moon’s nodes, her mother fetched her water,
staked her strong, decked her arms with ribbons.