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 […]

Your words glisten in the oncoming headlights. Pop, pop, pop, like bursting balloons. The windscreen erupts, a torrent of glass flooding empty spaces. Tyres squeal all around. I take your hand. Like I used to.   I’m saying it because I miss you, I said to break the silence. A silence you used to fill.

I watch as you linger at the western edge of the field. You raise a hand. Pop. Then blackness.   It’s the sound we hear in the womb. It’s a rush of blood, the beating of a heart, a filling and compressing of lungs. It’s the comforting hush of a parent. It’s the rhythmic pitter-patter

I’m trying to find another way to phrase it when she interrupts.   ‘Do you smell them?’   She gestures toward an open window with a subtle nod of her head. The air carries the sweet aroma of her memory. I strain to fill my lungs with it before it fades away.   ‘The roses.