izzy

There’s a small gang of trees standing naked outside the airstrip perimeter. The other trees stand staring from behind their lush greenery, foliage twitching, twigs snapping and crackling. They’re putting the forest to shame, holding their shivering grey bodies so close to the fence for everyone to see. *** I find myself hoping they’ll shimmy or do whatever the tree version of twerking is up against the fence, shaking it for the incoming flights, flaunting it because why the hell not? These trees could flaunt their nakedness aggressively at all the jet-lagged eyes staring puffy and vacant out of little porthole windows. They’re still trees no matter what they look like – they’re just as much tree as their prudent leaf-sheathed cousins – and trees can pretty much do whatever they goddamn please. It won’t stop people cutting them down, so they may as well strut past this fence and say, ‘fuck you, I’m beautiful!’ to all the other judgemental trees and then chest-bump and co-ordinate a dance like a 90s girl band or start a rap collective or whatever. I don’t know, whatever it is that’s in the hearts of this gang of naked trees next to the airstrip perimeter, whatever they want to be or do I have no doubt that they could make it happen. That they’d do it really well, no matter what the other green-eyed trees say.

*

sarah

As the metal hinged open
And the ice hissed in the air
He sighed for the first time
In six thousand decades
And felt his moustache stiff with frost
His brain thawed into life
Ran some basic diagnostics
Played a little pre-recorded message
You died. We froze you. We love you.
And he stood for a moment
Patting down his shiny silver suit
And arranged his face into a stern sort of nobility
The sort of expression befitting a cryonaut
He squared his shoulders and held his breath
Flying cars and robot dogs flitting around his brain
And stepped out into the sun
Stood blinking like a new god
And surveyed the future that man had wrought
He raked the sky for shimmering buildings
And found none, just drifting clouds
He peered about for roads of light and whirring hovercraft
And saw nothing but dirt and straggly trees
He sought the gaze of the crowds of the future
And found not a soul, not one
Until a hesitantly cleared throat at his side
Drew his eyes to a pale-eyed old man with tufted white hair
Who smiled apologetically, shuffled his feet
And whispered ‘We never did work it out, you know
They left me long enough to let you out
Let you walk on the earth one more time
And once we’re done, we’re going
There’s nothing here for us’
And while neither said it aloud
British reticence still being what it was
In the waning hours of the world
They both knew that ‘gone’ didn’t mean to Spain for the summer
And with nothing more to say
They stood together, side by side
And drank in the dust and the wind and the sun
And the hum of their hearts
And the taste of the end

*