om padme hum
Prayers are wishes sent to the universe. People have different tongues for their prayers and different ways of doing it--kneeling at the foot of the bed with hands steepled or on a rug faced to the sun--but they do it. It doesn't have to do with religion or belief in a higher being. I know atheists who pray--not to a great creator, but to whatever it is that grants wishes and makes everything all right in the world. Prayers are hopes given a human language. We pray every time we tell a hidden truth or when we reveal our secret wicked heart's wishes.

Writing or creating is the closest that I get to prayer--most of the time. Yet, I pray every day for the world, for myself, for everything I see that hurts me somewhere deep. Now, I pray for trees.

I live on a narrow street, where the houses lean like crooked teeth and there's just enough space for cars to pass. Nothing larger can safely navigate my street. Because my neighbourhood is close to a major freeway, trucks sometimes barrel through the Main Street area. Main Street can take it. My little street cannot. A few weeks ago, a semi took out half of the two trees in front of my house.

These trees are my friends. In the living room, I often read my books in a window box overlooking the street. From there, I watch squirrels leaping from branch to gutter and back again like little aerialists. The birds feather their nests in the spring to make room for the open mouths and pleading cries of bald, pink infant birds, so ugly they're adorable. The branches grow heavy and lazy with blossoms and honeybees in May. I like these trees. In Philadelphia, nothing seems natural or sprung from the earth. This has been one of the biggest adjustments for me in moving here. In Arizona, the natural world was my world, singing a song from my blood to my bones.

So, a semi-driver took out half of the trees by making a shortcut on our narrow street. I returned home to find branches clutching the air like hands on the sidewalk. The truck driver laughed about it. Anger clenched my fists. The landlord filled out a police report. Shaun and I worried that the trees--our trees--would not survive because so much had been taken from them and so much now lay wasted. Then, a second driver hit our trees. This driver did not stop, but we ran after his truck to get his information and file a complaint. We were certain that if the trees didn't die the first time, they would this time. Our landlord chain-smoked on the steps of our building, upset about the trees dying. I was glad that I had a landlord who'd be upset about trees.

For weeks, I've been watching both trees. At night, when I return from work, I go out to them, put my hands on the rough bark, and say, "Grow. Grow. Grow. Live. Live. Live." Shaun isn't as weepy over them, but he will pat their trunks and say, "Keep hanging in there, guys." I've turned the hand-carved tree spirit figurine my father made towards the trees. Yesterday, I noticed the trees were trying to grow bark over the bare places, making safe what was injured. The branches are starting to bud. I think that the trees will live. Every night, I pray to whatever protects them that they'll continue to survive.

We're all like trees in this world, terrified that someone will tear us apart, but reaching towards the sky still the same. Reaching, spreading our fingers out to hold doves and prayers and sunlight. We face spiritual and physical evisceration, and yet, we are stronger than we know. We have skin thicker than history and lies. So we pray and we grow.

talullah jewel