The Threshold

The storm is memory now. The branch it tore away is gone; the knot remains: a dark whorl where the grain refused. What broke off has no name. Then: spring. Sap rises, meets the whorl. The grain bends. You have carried it so long you cannot tell: did you grow around the wound, or through it?

The Way

You trace the rings. There: the year the wood tore. The grain has not run straight since. First, the impulse to lean: to bare the scar to every passerby. Then, the urge to wrench the grain straight until the knot vanishes. But the knot is compressed wood. It will not yield. So you grow. Neither towards the wound nor away. Another ring, and another. Each touches the knot as it passes. Each moves on. Come spring, a bird settles where the torn branch once was. You built it no nest. Your growing carved one. The knot becomes one whorl amongst many. The wood alone knows which ring is the storm.

The Shadow

The Seamless feeds the bark and starves the heartwood. She turns the storm into a blemish so she need not grieve it. She forces the grain straight, as if heartwood were rot. That was long ago, she says. The wood has closed. One spring, a child carves initials into her bark. The blade slips clean through and meets only air. She grows on as if nothing had been found – pushing upwards until the canopy grows too heavy for a hollow trunk. The fall opens her to the sky at last. In the cross-section: hollow where the heartwood should have borne the height. The knot sits at the centre, untouched. Every ring grew around it. None grew through it. ❖ The Transparent sends all his sap to the knot. A traveller rested in his shade, praised the leaves, and left without seeing the knot. All those rings, unseen. He learnt to lean – to turn towards every passerby until the break was all they could see. Once, it worked. A stranger stopped beneath him, looked up. There, he said. He stayed. For one season, the grain uncurled. The stranger took to the road again. The bend returned, deeper now for having known release – and for refusing to forget it. Years later, another traveller stops in his shade. How alive you look, she says. He turns his trunk until the knot faces her. Before she can see it whole, the wind returns. The trunk splits clean along the seam – the line he had spent a life turning towards the road.

The Cut