Dear You, Who is Also a Tree—

This is a love letter because there are still some places where I can't use the word without tripping over myself. Have you ever wanted to tell somebody that you loved them, but you weren't even sure how you meant it? Well, I love you, whatever that means. I just hope it reaches you in time, but I'm also no longer pretending that I know what time is up to these days.

If you trace the root of a word, you can trace a root of the thing itself. The word time is drawn from the proto-indo-european root da-, 'to divide.' Maybe don't quote me on this, but I'm pretty sure that the thing we call time is just god fractioned up into pieces. When did we decide to do that? And who was that we that put god on the chopping block?

I apologize in advance for my aimlessness. Time isn't linear, anyways, and my feelings have been running in circles.

I am becoming like the winter trees outside my window, timing themselves into spring. Everyday, I look down, and there's a little less space between my limbs. I'm filling out. Fattening up with all the beautiful and hard things. Like loving somebody, and not knowing what it means, and grieving them a little bit everyday because they'll leave this place one day soon, and I know they need to. Like softening up around grief. Like slipping right under it and letting it bed me. Like telling grief that I volunteer for the chopping block because love divided up into times is somehow still worth it. Like telling grief to do its worst, only to find out that I've been fooled. This grief does not cut up; it cuts open. When I relate with it, I do not become divided. I multiply. I am flayed.

Dear grief, flay me up and spread me out. Remind me that I'm time's god. Continuous as sky.

There's just about one thing that I know right now, and I know it stubbornly. When I come to a hard place—a wall, a fist closed tight around a heart—it is not time to love less. It is time to love more. Create a wave so big that it can tsunami through somebody's reasons.

Look, I'm just trying to know your softness.

Look, I won't lie to you or tell you to leave your soft center unprotected. I have my masculinity, too—I don't leave home without it. But if you protect a thing for too long without being with it, you forget what it is. You forget you know it. You forget why you wanted to protect it in the first place.

All I'm saying is that we are like winter trees, and we are big enough to get filled in by all the beautiful and hard things. You can keep your grief and your fear and your uncertainty. You don't have to do anything about them. You can just know them and know that each one has a backside. Gratitude and will and clarity. You can't know one side without knowing the other. Don't divide them. Both are roots. Life won't feel so unstable if you root into every side of it. You won't have to feel so in control of time if you can control your movement with the seasons.

Look, all I'm saying is that we are like winter trees. You can only move with the seasons if you have deep roots that hold you steady. Boughs go up because roots go down. It is not one or the other. If you wanna know love, you gotta know grief. If you wanna go far, you gotta stay close. You are not a thing divided. You are a sky. You are time's god.

All I'm saying is know your roots and choose them. Even if you don't always know what they mean.

—Sincerely Me, Who is a Tree and a Root