The cherry tree knows me. As a child, it shuddered and swayed outside my bedroom window. In the daylight it whispered to me, “Climb into my branches, child. Climb to the heavens. Here is your freedom. Come and look.”

I often climbed in her loving arms. Arms that felt familiar and comforting. These were not the hard branches of a tree, but the warm embrace of a mother my soul longed to feel.

“The tree talks to me, mama,” I tell her. She refuses to hear of it. She tells me I speak foolishness. She tells me I am hers. She tells me I am wanted.  

In half-lucid moments, eyes seem to peer at me from the tree. Eyes of those who made me and sent me here. I know those eyes, I think. They belong to me, I think. Don’t think, I think.  Forget. Just forget. The tree holds my beginnings in her roots. I don’t have roots so I plant them in the tree.  

Mama tells me I mustn’t climb the tree. I’ll fall. I’ll be hurt. She doesn’t know that I must lie in the arms of the tree because my hurt already exists. The tree holds my hurting. It softens the sharp edges of my grief.

I grow. Cherry trees have no eyes. I know this. Still the tree talks to me. It whispers, “Climb in my branches, child. Climb to the heavens. Here is your freedom. Come and look. Your people lie far away. Find them here.” I climb and I’m at home.

Years stumble forward. I’m taller now. An anxious teen, I’m invisible to my family. I hide my real self from everyone but the tree. I climb her still. Less often now, but higher, out onto the thinner branches that threaten to snap. I don’t care. This is my way out of the pain. This is freedom.

And then I leave, all grown up. The tree falters. She is dying. “I know that tree meant so much to you. I thought you would want to be here when we cut it down,” Mama says. I watch. I weep silently. Roots ground away. I know that pain.

Decades fly by. The tree barely enters my mind. 

It’s nighttime, my eyes are weary from the day. I have nothing I want to write. Nothing to add to my nightly word vomit. I fall asleep. My journal falls open next to me.

I dream. The tree is calling to me to climb once again. The eyes I thought I saw in her branches belonged to a mother I don’t recall. I feel her touch my face, but she disappears again. I startle. A dream. I assure myself it was a dream. I slumber on.

Dawn breaks. The sun warms my room. I awaken to tapping at my window. Only birdsong and a haunting wind, I think. My journal is closed but words fill the pages. Words I don’t recall writing last night. “This is not my hand,” I shout.

The spirit of the tree held my roots when I could not find them. It grounded me. It lives in my veins now. Somehow, she has written these words through me:

“Climb in my branches, child.  Climb to the heavens. I give you freedom to fly.  

“Forever I will look out for you.

“Forever I will look.  

“Forever… You are mine.”