Counting Cherry Stones - E. E. Rhodes
Long-listed written pieces of 250 words or under submitted to the 2021 Urban Tree Festival writing competition on the theme of “trees close to you”
Counting Cherry Stones
Outside our apartment block there is a wild cherry tree in an oil drum. I pass six more on my walk to school. I start out alone but someone is waiting at each tree. Meena. Mariam. Lydia. Mira. Timor. Franc. We skip along, singing, not enough to annoy anyone, just counting all the trees.
I bury six cherry stones on the walk home every day, whispering my friend’s names aloud, pushing the stones deep into the gritty soil between the blown-out buildings. A single stone planted for each of them, so all my friends will be safe overnight and always. I think they do the same for me.
One sequestering night my family flees those streets with the wild cherry trees.
On the cell-phone screen, at a great distance, I watch rubble growing where once there were all our small domesticities.
I go back as an adult, eventually, a paper in my passport permitting my return.
I try to retrace the route from school, but it’s nearly impossible. Not because of the derelict buildings, but because of the cherry trees crowding the wasteland, their clusters of fruit hanging like a million jewelled lanterns.
At our shell-struck apartment, the old cherry tree in the oil drum has survived undiminished. Meena and Lydia are waiting for me too. In the shade of the tree the three of us eat handfuls of sweet wild cherries. Then, in silence, we bury the stones for our four friends who are gone.
E. E. Rhodes is an archaeologist who lives in Worcestershire, with her partner, a lot of books, and a horde of mice in the wainscotting. @electra_rhodes
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