Wild roots and tamed branches

I raised myself in the forest behind our house—an unwanted child no one cared for. Wounded knees and scratched shins remind me of the tall pines teaching me the first lessons. I collected dirt under my nails and petals in my pockets. I wrote stories before anyone knew I could write. I read them to my dolls, my only audience that ever truly listened. I mixed crushed violets and rainwater in chipped jars, creating secret potions that would turn me beautiful, that would make people love me.

I wasn't a bad child. I simply couldn't sit still. My wandering mind and restless curiosity didn't let me. So I was told to be good, be proper, be quiet. I traded the bark and mud for fluorescent classrooms. Shame grew in the places where wonder once bloomed, and I learned to abandon what made me bright. That seemed to be the only magic potion that worked. I was handed the blueprint for a life I didn't want: the house with the picket fence, the family-sized car, the predictable future of a corporate career, television evenings, and children I feared I didn't even want. I tried to mold into the shape of a woman others expected me to be, cutting my branches wildly until I resembled something acceptable. But the pruning broke me. It exhausted me until I cracked.

Breaking sent me to my knees, sobbing. But I was so close to the earth I touched it again—the dark, cold, wet soil that gives life to everything. It gave life back to that little girl I used to be. Wild, dirt-soaked, breathless with stories, she rose again. And I learned that the greatest magic is not trying to fit where we don't belong, desperately searching for love, but by returning to our own soil. Letting our roots reach deeply to the ground. Allowing them to nourish us so we can grow tall, and our branches can touch the sky.

Everything I once loved as a child became my compass. I read, bake and write, and get dirty in the forest—weary from the heavy work but never again from expectations.

When I returned home—

the old roots whispered my name,

my leaves found the sun.

I chose the form of the Japanese haibun for this one because I thought it has the ability to express the contradictions this challenge brought up.

Haibun combines prose poem followed by a haiku, that serves to deepen the meaning of the prose, either by intensifying its themes or serving as a juxtaposition to the prose’s content.