Steadfast by Christopher Bowen

She woke beside the bed that morning returning to it for years after saying to him, “I'm tired of you doing this to yourself. Someday you will be as tired as I am.”
 
But she loved him more than anyone or just as much as love could give, the giving tree she was all limbs gone and just the stump to sit on with no leafs. He woke from that same bed in his dreams years later to describe in a way he couldn't then how cold and alone the world was without her.
 
“In death you may find me, but in life you have lost me.”
 
And people came and went beside the bed, shook hands and made deals over the commodity of the person, the soul and it's wealth. They barter. They steal. They cry, but never laugh. So with nothing left to give but ears, a waving tide of shaken wheat field miles away whispering her name over and over and over again, kingdom came. Bustle went beside itself of: life, people, and love.
 
Finally she said, “In your dreams you will remember me and the tree you once knew  that stood thirty yards up, some thirty yards away, some thirty years down the road, some thirty people in my bed and in my stead.”




Christopher Bowen is a mid-western chef and writer. He is the author of We Were Giants (Sunnyoutside Press, 2013)and blogs from Burning River.

Street art by SVEIK. 
Photo by Adam Lawrence. 

HINDS is a four-piece group from Madrid, and "Garden" is the latest single from their forthcoming debut album "Leave Me Alone" which will be released this January via Mom + Pop. Picture a '60's surf/garage rock vinyl album washed up on a beach in Spain in 1995 and four young girls found it and played it everyday through out their childhood. 



Author Note: This prose-poem originally appeared in the first volume of a two year annual I published with other authors through my blog Burning River and a listing on Duotrope almost ten years ago. Though many may take different things from this work, it has and always will be, about my grandmother. I dedicated my first chapbook from Sunnyoutside to her with the line 'For My Giving Tree' in 2013. It was her favorite book. But she was my best friend, to this day, and her death crippled me for a long time.