A man stares at the tree, bark folded like his own skin, branches like veins against a stone-gray sky. They creak and groan like old bones. 

Just prune the limbs, he’d told his son. No need to uproot the whole damned thing. 

It’s older than he is by two decades, a relic of halcyon days long past, planted by his own father at the end of the war.

It’s an eyesore, his son said in response, hair peppered with gray at the edges. Half the branches don’t get leaves anymore. It’s had a good long life. Maybe we’ll make a table out of it.

The man’s had a good long life. 

They can’t make a table out of him. 

+

A woman stares at her hands, one folded over the other like the pages of a book in her lap. Sometimes they are weathered, mottled with stories she no longer owns. Sometimes they are smooth, like a treasured first-edition copy pilfered from her mother’s bookshelf.  

How are you doing today, miss? 

She nods. She smiles. She trembles, afraid of what might spill out if she opens her mouth. The words are all wrong, she wants to say. All the chapters are out of order. Whoever bound the book had done a poor job. Everything was creased and crimped, ink bleeding from one page to the next. 

The nurse wheels her to the window; they planted the sapling just for her.  

Lots of birds at the feeder today. 

She nods. She smiles. 

Would you like me to read to you for a while? 

She nods. She smiles. She listens. She watches, hands folded in her lap. 

+

The man visits her on Tuesday, despite his promise not to. Her daughters made the arrangements, a tree uprooted without say. She sits by the window and watches the birds, unaware of his arrival. Her white puff of dandelion hair haloes her head, and he doesn’t disturb her. The staff didn’t put up the pictures he’d sent, and he doesn’t want to hear her ask who he is. 

After he leaves, he packs his bags. His roots are deep, planted in early spring before his babies were born, but he’s ready to pull them. There’s nothing left for him here. 

+

Where did you go? 

It’s a question the woman can’t shake. She doesn’t know who it’s for, only that she should ask. It flutters in the space between her palms, a captured moth desperate to escape. 

wheredidyougo

The pages in her mind are difficult to turn, the words too small to read. 

Outside, a bird lands on the young sapling. Her mind pauses on a dog-eared memory. The skin of her hands is smooth. Dirt clings to her nail beds. She presses her fingers into warm soil, packing dirt around a seed. 

Where did I go?

Brown birds flit from branch to branch. Golden seeds glitter in the snow. Gray branches scratch the winter sky. Wet tears stain the page, and a woman unfolds her hands. 

+++

Millie Kensen studied creative writing at the University of North Dakota and holds a master’s degree in education from George Mason University. She lives in Minnesota with her husband and three young daughters, where she spends most of her time rewriting the endings to her favorite books and fighting off swarms of mosquitoes. Her work has appeared in Typehouse Literary Magazine, The Bookends Review, Glassworks Magazine, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.