Christmas Tree Yi Du Zhao

There’s a forest in my apartment building that I’ll always call home.

I built it from the ground up with crayons and soft hands

From lego blocks to plastic twigs spawned my little kingdom

An oasis of a memory I keep under my pillow

A photograph my dad keeps in his wallet

There was an array of cactuses by my window that I called my desert. I was never tall enough to see all the potted plants, but the sunlight from the window beamed at my forehead like a kiss every morning.

I fell asleep to the moonlight hitting the sheer curtains every night, and it was as if the sun had never set.

In my memory, the lovebirds on my balcony never died. They sang love songs as they nibbled on each other’s feathers with affection

I would watch them from the living room, idealizing a life where the food bowl was always full and the water was always fresh

Where love was plentiful, and every word rang like a sweet melody

I would gaze at the aquarium like I was in the ocean, I would sit under the Christmas tree like I was in the woods

Like a fingerprint, I was a tree stump

Like the files of human memory, I was a photograph

Forever, my core remains childish and so my forest grows