The Trees that Grew in Different Times

A Flash Fiction by Joyce Bingham

Photo by Andrew Shelley on Unsplash

Fingers raw under torn strips of cloth, the echo of previous blisters itch your skin. You stand waiting. Clouds accumulate at the edges of the blue sky; like a shadow of rain pulling tight over the parched land. Static teases your sweat-slicked brow. Others eye the expectant clouds above the wide-open field, each person intent on their own strip of ridge and furrow, ready to worship any precious drops. You have an urge to giggle like the children you had in different times.

You have prepped your dust-dry soil. Terraced the slope with waste plastic and clods of brick-hard clay. You wait, spade in hand to scoop and dig in any rain that falls on your parcel of land. Now you stand missing the shade of the trees you helped to scorch and poison. You mourn their silhouettes on the horizon, the rustle of their leaves. A flash of lightning sears through the ponderous cloud, the thunder walloping into your head. You can almost taste the rain, feel it caress your skin. The longing stabs your chest. You remain standing in dilapidated boots, their shine long lost, like the husband you had in different times.

The wind rises across the plain and a swirl of thin soil stings your legs. Fecund clouds pass away, you count the gaps in the thunder and you know the rain clouds are stretching away. Undulating cries of prayer and curse bounce off the parched land with no trees to absorb the pain. Forked lightning cauterises the sky far ahead, no rain will fall and thunder is now distant. You too sob for water, enough to survive, no more. Your voice is harsh and dirt-dry, unlike the chords you sang in different times.

You watch the blue sky grow. Enough to make a sailor a shirt. You imagine the gravid treacle mass in your belly germinating an apple pip in your appendix, pushing down, growing roots. You can’t move or the tender roots will sever, they move into your veins. You branch your arms into the air and leaf buds burst through your hair follicles. Photosynthesis trickles like electricity through your arteries. If you stand long enough you will grow a tap root deep into the earth and bring up the sweetest of water, sprinkle it over the field. You will save the soil, like the trees did, in different times.

The sun is relentless, thick with heat and sharp with waves that will burn and ravage. You are felled into the dust bowl of soil, your head thumps on a hard pillow of clay. Prostrate like a priest in different times you wake to your neighbour’s gentle touch,. You are shaken into consciousness and cajoled to walk back to the cattle-free stall in the barn you call home. Your lips are moistened with brackish water, and you mourn for the trees that grew in different times.

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Author: Joyce Bingham is a Scottish writer whose work has appeared in publications such as Flash Frog, Molotov Cocktail, Ellipsis Zine, Raw Lit, and Sci-fi Shorts. She lives in Manchester, UK. When she’s not writing, she puts her green fingers to use as a plant whisperer and Venus fly trap wrangler.

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