I see it against sky, winter cloroxing the light as I aim the rifle, each clump, parasite, a world in the wider sense of the tree. Elm, it should've been dead years ago, hanging on against blight, the widening thoroughfare, the very notion people should live in tree-lined streets. Growth-stunted skeleton, lichened limbs, it freezes solstice in its bones. Weakened, prey to sticky pearls that cling to bird beaks, feet, mizzle, the mistletoe blooms like the brain in a glass jar, perfectly rounded, ended, alive with some purpose other than mere life, signaling the trunk to let go its silhouette, take up its music and dance, roots waltzing dumb in darkness. The mistletoe metastasizes in us, silencing the organ life cannot do without and love can, green heart, the same green, cream spreading one day against the sunset of blood. The rifle shell can bring it down, bring us down, alter us, we who suck the earth for breath, wait for it to hold us. But before the parasite, almost parasol, ribs bursting from the core, before we know how the uninvited kills, empties shade, two mouth draw together, silent as breath but as determined, and together, astonished by desire, the dilating eye, press away the word.
Mistletoe
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