Photo by Lucas Hoang
April 26, 2020
Last Christmas
Can someone tell that pine tree,
lying behind the gate over a bed of fading grass and no pillow,
—trunk naked, bark flacking, head tilted, the pebbles in her throat suffocating the green of her face, and letting the yellow slither in like a poison to take hold—
Can someone tell that pine tree, thrown in the yard since December
That there will be no waking up to hundreds more years, or to cuddling in cones and witnessing with pride their giving away seeds or their serotiny;
that the whiffs of cinnamon and candles burning are fleeting from her needles, and
that there will be no next Christmas for her;
that she won’t stand tall, for her hundreds extended palms to hold jewelry and smiles, and to gloat—glitters spread over the thread of memories dangling from her fingers.
Can someone tell that tree not to wait;
That there will be no next Christmas coming for her or going to her;
That the evergreen is never again.
Photo by Adam Tarwacki
The Author
Rana Bitar is a Syrian-American physician, poet, and writer. She earned her Master’s in English and Creative Writing from Southern New Hampshire University. Her poetry has appeared in many journals including, DoveTales, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Magnolia Review, El Portal, Pacific REVIEW, Black Coffee Review, The Phoenix, The Dewtrope, The International Human Rights Art Festival, The Charleston Anvil, and in Seeing Things: Anthology of Poetry: Woodland Arts Editions and Bright Hill Press & Literary Center, 2020. Her essays have been published in The Pharos Journal and Pink Panther Magazine; her poetry chapbook, A Loaf Of Bread (Unsolicited Press, 2019), was a finalist in the “Concrete Wolf Chapbook Competition” in 2017, and won an honorable mention in “The 2017 Louis Award” for poetry. Her narrative nonfiction book, The Long Tale Of Tears and Smiles, will be published by Global Collective Publishers, Spring 2021. She lives in upstate NY, where she practices hematology and oncology.
Rana Bitar