Some cold nights the fog tinkles against the wind-
ows and shushes along the roof like a paper bag. On one
of these, I fell asleep to the thick mist sounds and woke
to a tree in my room—not through the roof or double
panes, but through the floor. It wasn’t a sapling, but wasn’t
full grown either. Its top leaves were maybe six feet
above where it broke through. It was pretty wide. I had trouble
getting out of bed then squatting low enough to navigate under
the lowest branches. At the trunk, little bits of floorboard
arced up like an apron. I touched the bark and it felt
exactly like bark. For a moment, I worried the sun
only came in from one west-facing window. Would this
tree starve? And I looked up through the broad leaves
and the soft grey branches and could not see
the ceiling. Instead, what was overhead were shifting
lights I knew were synesthetic music—something
upbeat and sad. I started to sing along. It was a long
time before I heard my father’s voice in the hall and knew
I’d have to explain a tree in my room, like there were any
way I could. And I somehow knew the fog outside
was in the hall now and everywhere that wasn’t here
where I sat. And I knew this is what it was like to grow
older, to see each thing once held close shake itself
into mist, to wonder at how everything keeps turning
new, while from below, you slowly become
the story you had to.
John A. Nieves has poems forthcoming or recently published in journals such as: Alaska Quarterly Review, Iowa Review, American Poetry Review, swamp pink and New Ohio Review. A 2025 Pushcart Prize winner, he also won the Indiana Review Poetry Contest and his first book, Curio, won the Elixir Press Annual Poetry Award Judge’s Prize. He is associate professor of English at Salisbury University and an editor of The Shore Poetry.
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