Competition Twenty Winning Flash Fiction: The Tree Wife by Charles Prelle

The day she became a tree her husband planted her in their garden. From the Royal Horticultural Society website he learned it’s important to dig your hole deep enough for the roots of your tree to set, so the husband of the wife who had become a tree struck his spade again and again into the frozen ground outside their house until he tore a hole clear through to the centre of the earth.

The RHS website also emphasized the importance of ensuring you water your tree well, so the husband filled a bathtub and washed the tree that used to be his wife. He took great care to soak her every limb, gently sponging her coarse flesh and massaging each knot. Just as he’d done before.

As time went by his tree wife grew strong, so the husband tied a swing around her limb for their daughter to play on. In spring she’d pick flowers from the surrounding field and place them at her tree mother’s trunk. Purple pansy, yellow daisy, and red rose I love you’s. When autumn came, the husband would collect each leaf his tree wife shed in black plastic bags. When his wife became a tree, her head was only bare in winter.

While tending his garden one afternoon the husband overheard his daughter playing on her tree mother’s swing. He marvelled at the flesh and blood girl; at how tall she’d grown and the vibrancy of her bloom. For the first time in as long as he could remember laughter rang through the tree wife’s boughs. A laugh so like her mother’s. So the husband set down his spade and pushed his daughter on her tree mother’s swing. Higher she cried, and the girl sailed skyward. Drifting hopefully like dandelion seeds. Like new beginnings.

Charles Prelle is a London based writer of short fiction. His published work can be found with Ellipsis Zine, Reflex Press, and Retreat West among others or on his website cprellewriter.wordpress.com

@charlesprelle.bsky.social

Photo by Ryan Hafey on Unsplash

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