The Baobab

by Vel Prozorova

Niko Photos

Between the grapefruit mornings and arterial nights, little happens but the wind and the endless pulse of growing roots; because though the water comes sometimes, and doesn’t, more often, life hasn’t left this place just yet.

There has always been a constant state of liminality, here.

Once, there was a fence. There for no other reason than to use dead wood to surround the still-living. Curious bodies climbed it with ease, pressing close with breath and whispers to see within the thick hollow trunk. Within that were names; the letters filled in by wisps of cobwebs and breaths of the desert. Within each, was history, memories of desperate hands and crowded bodies, forced close together and contained.

Once, this was a jail, a small place to hold the convicted on their way from one dry town to another.

Then it stood forgotten.

Then it filled again, with the curious and the ignorant.

Then it stood empty once more.

Shadows stretch out like lazy cats, curl to nap beneath the trunk as the sun passes overhead, and stretch the opposite way come evening, claws tickling against the cracking earth and teasing free more roots to breach its surface.

Once, feet left scuff marks on these roots they tripped over, hands pressing fleeting and worshipful to the fat trunk for just a moment of balance. Now, just scrapes remain, rare against the trunk, etched by knives and stones, the tree’s very branches hewn and twisted free from its limbs, by determined drunk fingernails that stole the bark beneath them home.

Now, those left are pushed deeper into the flesh by endless curling gales, entrenching names of those long dead in the tree that outlived them.

But names have always had power.

When the rains don’t fall for long enough, the ancient marks begin to smooth over; one by one, letter by crooked letter, slipping slowly into the arches of the bark and between the knobs of long-gone branches; their history, their memories, their life, seeping into the aching veins beneath. On nights like that, the names don’t go quietly. A howl takes up harmony with the wind, each voice individual and new, and as each letter vanishes, the roots groan and arch beneath the earth, the branches flex and stretch arthritic limbs and settle into silence with a sigh, just that little bit longer, that little bit more sprightly.

Much of the swollen trunk base is bare, now, worn deceptively youthful by decades of drought. Even the scuffs on the roots are going day by day, stroked smooth by the winds and sands around them.

But everything is liminal. Even here.

Once the water ends for good, and the names run out, and the bulk of the old forgotten prison stands bare and still, there will come another process and another spark of life. From within, there will come whispers, gently moving the cobwebs that hold them swaddled safe and warm within the breast of the ancient giant. Names once absorbed now given life again anew to murmur memories to each other.

There can be no death without being forgotten.

And the gentle reminders of the tree’s initial youth, its inevitable aging, its incomparable survival, its stubbornness, will ensure its immortality.

For a time, at least.

Until the water comes once more.

Or some new hand is raised to carve a mark upon the trunk again.

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Vel Prozorova is a transgender writer based in New Zealand, who makes a habit of challenging gender stereotypes and bringing queer lives to the forefront of his writing. Outside of his work, Vel is studying to be a dog trainer, and on the weekends fights his cat for keyboard rights.