I've just opened another letter and I find there is more!


Mom,

I know you and Father did not want me to be wood. Maybe that is why you forced men of metal on me later, because if I wasn't metal, maybe our babies would be. You are crystal, but metal grinds and scratches crystal; you must have known how many times I was scratched and scarred. How many times has he hurt you, mother, willing or not? With the first metal boy, I told myself it wasn't him, I didn't put together the scratches and his hard edges. But his sharp bones tore the skin off my breast, and soon I could see notches and scoring in the wood underneath. I was young and I was in love and so I bore the pain, until a large mass had grown there and every caress was agony; you know I left him then. I would not let the other men of metal so close to me, but they, too, cut at my skin and always left me bleeding; the scar in my chest did not heal.

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It's been some time since I've received a letter to pass on. This one's been percolating for a while, so there may be more, but I wanted to pass this one on, it's been sitting on my desk for some time.


Mom,

Before I was born, I fell. Through the bright, self-lit limbs of monstrous tall trees, I fell with the sound of the wind in my ears: WHOOSH. That sound and the exquisite, luminous white of leafless trees, and only darkness and silence otherwise. I stared straight down, because I couldn't focus on any single branch, instead they tore my view with jagged white like lightning, one after one, whoosh whoosh whoosh. They were all molten platinum veins glowing in the darkness, the limbs, and they were many and the same.

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