Word Count: 270
In a past life I was a sugar maple tree. Men with metal cut into my skin. My sap flowed like blood at their touch. My children were seeded with the wind until I grew old and brittle. One night in a thunderstorm that whipped at my branches, pulled at my rain-soaked leaves, I toppled, uprooted and died.
In another I was a young vixen chased by the males every spring. Chased by horsemen and hounds in the bright beauty of autumn. Alone, I lay in my den with my babies in winter. Alone I faced one more spring.
Once I was a young girl in the desert with thick shiny black hair and dark eyes. My husband was four times older with breath the putrid scent of dead blossoms. I gave him four children, all daughters. At twenty I was murdered, my newborn baby girl slaughtered too on my breast. Buried together under the light of a half moon while young men smoked and laughed.
In my last life I was a virgin raped by the quarterback. A senior who afterward sputtered and called me a whore. He went on to Harvard. I birthed and gave his son up to strangers, went on to college and clawed my way in the world. I was the first executive caught in the downsizing. I was the first tragedy of the times.
I wait and I watch as the earth revolves, evolves into society’s utopian ideals. When asked to come back to grow into the first female president, I think very hard and go back to the end of the line.
