Tree Image by iStock

Editor’s Note: The Forward is featuring essays, poems and short stories written for our Young Writers Contest. Today’s entry was written by Lily Stroud, a 15-year-old student from Brooklyn Tech in Brooklyn, NY. You can find more work from our young writers here.

SO THIS IS FREEDOM:

7 years old

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I belonged to two families

My family at home and my

Tree family

My tree family

Inside my favorite birch, small, but never overlooked

The walls

A faint misty lilac,

The carpet

Shaggy and white, grayed with age and the mess

Of my being there

Contestant: Lily Stroud is a 15-year-old student at Brooklyn Tech. Image by Courtesy of Lily Stroud

14 years old

Double a lifetime

Of knowledge

Of wisdom

Of suffering

Every footstep, a mountain climbed

Every heartbeat, a race ran

Every conversation, a weekend of obnoxious partying

All purpose

Lost

My shadow stalking me

No matter how far I went

The dark witch would beat me

Swallow me whole

15 years old

Who am I?

The air that is neither winter nor spring filled

My lungs

The pansies, the tulips, the crocuses,

Rebirthing

My tree

Life sprouting from its fingertips

I check in on my tree family

How is baby Fay?

I recall her body was not faring well last year

A voice whispers in my ear

Look up

My tree has an intruder

A rope

Caught up in its limbs

Even in the strongest gale,

It would not give

I balance on my tippy toes

In my threadbare soul-popping

Chuck Taylors

Extend my eczema plagued hand and

Tug the scratchy textile down

I notice the people staring

But this time

I don’t have a care in the world

I just untangled my tree

My family

Myself

So this is freedom

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