My Canary on Our Little Cherry Tree

I breathe air perfumed in jasmine a dried 

lip canary sucked on. I nibbled their cherries

for my first eight years. 

I lived in a neighborhood; chalked roads, unpeeled

windows, crouched fences I crawled through. I

plucked blossoms from thorns 

just for a perch. 

Blood dripped from my cuticle, pricked. I smudged red

back on our trunk. In winter we never saw each other.

The canary, too busy playing fetch 

with their father. Our tree was just between us.

The canary slept beside porcelain hardly used.

I slept on rocks cradled by nestled twigs. 

Where the canary was supposed to be. 

Roots swallow themselves. Roots peppered

with crumbled wet minerals, heavier than 

trunks. Ready to be swallowed like

jasmine from a beak. 

The sunlight never burns. The shade draped from

the cherry tree. Our tree, it covered us both. It

bothered my canary. 

I sobbed like weeping willows when our tree asked

for you. My hair curled around the ear like tendrils on

vines. My lips in moss I smudged off your cheek. 

Something I can just taste. 

I shall not wander back to where branches sway above

my feet, their wings will only do the same. Wings

caress me so I can sit still, fathom the loam to bury

every inch of me, so I grow just like  their feather’s. 

I maneuver the arms on the cherry tree. 

They never grasp onto the blossoms that 

wash away with the wind. My canary lets go. 

Such ease like an 

undulating chirp. 

So delicate.

Aanya Khairari is a creative writer attending Interlochen Arts Academy. She writes fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. She often experiments with form, writes in reflection of family tradition and observation, and has been recognized in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. When not writing, you’ll find her baking cinnamon rolls, going on runs, rewatching her favorite films, or getting lost in the bridges of songs.