The Dream of Sprouts into Trees
by Surreal as Sunlight
So I know this is not poetry, but I was looking for some preliminary criticism on a short story that still needs a lot of work.
Giovanni nervously tightened his grip on her palm. Not because she made him nervous, but the thought of Aurelia feeling pain threw his mind to the bottom of the well where his father’s wedding ring resides. From where they stood he could see the well, his crying mother whose tear he could see glimmering through the window. Her incessant sobbing drowns out baby Matteo from letting his grandmother hear him coo and cry. Leona never stops crying, which is why Giovanni picked up the house with his own hands and left it by the well. Leona fills up the well because her husband will never return. He was seduced by the sirens of Sicily. She fills up the well with her fresh tears every night of her lonesome, and in the morning the villagers take large gulps of her sadness and despair.
Giovanni’s love for Aurelia turned her into glass. If she were to collide with any of the Olive trees, she would shatter amongst blades of grass that had been untamed for years. She said, “hold me tight, but hold me gently, and we can roll down this field safely together. It will save the marriage.”
He did as he was told. Giovanni however, with his anxiety held her the tightest she’s ever been held, and started to fall over to his side to roll with her. Gravity tore them down like golden rings falling through water. They began to tumble down avoiding all the oddly-shaped olive trees. Finally at almost the bottom of the hill, his back collided with the thick trunk of the youngest and strongest tree of them all. Dozens of olives suddenly fell and tapped his head. He sighed in relief; at least he had been hit against the tree, not Aurelia. He began to get up as he gasped in horror when he saw the remnants of Aurelia shattered across the ground.
His burly arms that had once moved a house cracked the lady of his life under their life-protecting pressure. He held her so tight that she broke between his limbs. His tears were not close to falling in the well, but 10 yards away from that same water source he buried the shards of Aurelia, along with the olives that tapped them after collision.
He looked nothing like his father, but everything like his mother. Aurelia never lived long enough to see herself in her son. But Giovanni missed her every time he looked at his son. “Matteo,” he would say, “go out in the yard while I take a moment for your mother.”
Matteo carefully inspects every inch of the ground. Careful of life, careful not to step on any insects or living things…besides the unavoidable grass. The sprout by the site of his mother’s death had now grown into a shrub. It looked much like the top of an olive tree, yet was just the baby of the species. By the time Matteo married Sofia, the shrub was a small tree.
“This is where my mother’s body is buried,” he whispered, “I never got to meet her.”
Sofia said nothing, tugged at his collar to bring him to her. She filled the silence with a kiss, no tongue, just lips. Somehow, her kisses always made everything better. She assumed that nothing else in the world mattered when she brought her lips to his.
And for the first time that evening, they made love.
Love like Vesuvius waiting to open up and explode, putting everything in its path into a frozen, cocoon-like state. They never imagined this would be the start of their sons’ life, their beloved Claudio.
Claudio took after his parents. Sofia and Matteo did not even cleanse their faces at separate times. Yet, they never even had a fight. Claudio’s observations of his parents influenced him in a way he never will understand.
Claudio held her strong the way you hold an ear of corn while you eat it. He nibbled and licked savoring her flavor. Ava threw him back forcefully into the tree’s natural seat. He took a breath as he fell still clutching her. As she began to fall with him she ripped an olive from it’s dangling branch and shoved it in his mouth.
His face turned into a dour look and he gasped, “It’s not ripe!”.
“Neither am I,” she kissed him harder and pulled herself closer to him. Her dark hair fell around her face to form a natural curtain that enclosed their actions. He loved it when her hair did that.
“Don’t you feel bad doing this?” Claudio asked, referring to Julio, the other man who loves her.
“…Yes,” she gasped in between the kisses she laid on his cheek and his brow.
“Then why?”
“That is why, Claudio,” she gave him a look that should have made it obvious to him that she liked being bad. This brought an utter feeling of disgust to Claudio’s heart, but he slipped the feeling away into the meadows of wineries that grew to the east. He tried his best to just enjoy the forbidden pleasures of Ava. She wasn’t his, but he liked to pretend she was. She just made it so easy for him.
Ava even pretended to love Claudio enough to help him carve their initials into the olive tree. Claudio sighed happily as he traced his index finger along the C….then he quickly moved to the A. Maybe the tree couldn’t lie, maybe it would hold its word.
The next morning, Ava took her axe to the olive tree before the morning dew had disappeared. As she lifted it high above her head, the feeling of satisfaction begun as she hacked away at the four generations of love that she was murdering. Ava was never to be seen again.
Claudio came back to fix the carving. It should have been a J, not a C.
He found nothing but a new seat. In which he could trace the rings to see that the tree was 68 years old. He sat on 68 years of love. As he walked away, ripe olives crushed under his feet.
