Krummholz
I like it up here
among these crooked trees
a bonsai paradise
everything gnarled and stunted
jutting at weird angles
the greens as dark as green gets.
You hand me a sprig of Edelweiss
and I remember my mother
how she would give several turns
to the music box atop my dresser
as she tucked me in each night.
Resting for a moment beside me
she sang along as she leaned down
kissing my forehead as I breathed in
the sweet smell of her face cream
“Blossom of snow may you bloom and grow.”
After she shut the door behind her
I’d watch as the plastic ballerina spun around
in her gauzy skirt, the notes getting further
and further apart as she slowed to a stop.
I tuck the white flower into the base of my braid
toe at a lichen-covered rock with my mud-caked boot
thinking how there’s no one left now
to love me that way.
And yet there’s you to lean back against
resting atop this windswept mountain
unfurling yet intertwined, together here
among these twisted persistent trees.