My father planted the hungry tree in the crack in the driveway, assuming it would starve, wither in the summer heat. He thought it would die before the first leaves unfurled.

Today, I harvested six seeds from the branches I can reach. Its roots sprawl, breaking the driveway into uneven slabs. I navigate these like a polar bear on a melting shoreline, waiting for the day the cracks widen enough to swallow me whole.

I clutch my burden close. The seeds from the hungry tree are sharp and red, thorns testing the resilience of my palm. When I make it at last inside, I put them in an empty Folgers can and seal the lid.

I will bury these seeds in the backyard, with all the others I’ve taken before they touched the ground. They must never grow. There must never be another hungry tree.

From the kitchen window I gaze at the tree my father tried to kill. In old age it sags, back gray as his hair where it scattered on the lawn—all that was left by the hungry tree.

It’s in no guides, no Wiki pages. Google doesn’t have an entry for the hungry tree. Does it photosynthesize? I don’t think so. I do know: fire, weed killer, lime, tar, frost, and drought won’t kill it. I know its bark feels like sandpaper, its leaves like rent steel. 

I also know that it hosts no birds in its branches. Its body belongs only to itself.

My father brought it home in a cracked terracotta planter and hid it in the basement, hoping darkness would stop it from growing. Tendrils forced open the door, wrapped around table legs and climbed the sides of my crib. It was then he decided to plant it.

The hungry tree shades the front lawn, replaces the garage it knocked over a year ago. I cannot trim it back. If a twig is broken, pitch stains the ground ochre, burns the grass white.

The hungry tree smells of anesthetic and papaya. It is as wide as my Camry parked in the back, far from its leering branches.

At night, the shadow it casts is darker than the rest.

I’ve never tried to cut down the hungry tree. Watching it through my window, I wait for it to consume this house at last. 

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Last night, lightning struck its trunk. In the morning, I find its girth has doubled. Currents traverse its branches. I harvest no seeds today.

My father never said where he got the tree. But though I was a child, I think I know.

I remember her leaving. Him following. Him returning with the tree.

Did it consume her? Did he trade her for it, like magic beans? Did she become it—willingly, unwillingly—without a backward glance?

It fed on him. The day he vanished, another branch grew. 

I’m older than they were—him and her. I wonder when it will take me, add a final branch to its rough trunk.

I’ve got nothing to leave behind. No partners, no children, no pets. When I go, there will be no one left to sate it.

Sun sets behind the hungry tree, and I realize I’ve watched it for hours. Shadows broaden the cracks in the driveway. I wonder if it will consume the house as well.

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As night falls, I roll up my sleeves. I drink three cups of water from the sink. I eat a handful of soil and half a sunflower seed. Fertilized, I walk outside.

The hungry tree is waiting.

I wrap my arms around its trunk. I know at last how to end its growth. There will be none after me.

Mud in my gut, I fall asleep in the arms of this starving, dying tree that once—in rivers of blood and history—was family.

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Marisca Pichette traces shadows and roots. More of her work appears in Strange Horizons, Fireside Magazine, Room Magazine, Flash Fiction Online, and Plenitude Magazine, among others. Her debut poetry collection, Rivers in Your Skin, Sirens in Your Hair, is forthcoming from Android Press in April 2023. Find her on Twitter as @MariscaPichette and Instagram as @marisca_write.