black history/futures: tree huggers

17 Feb 2019

it's feb! that means it's black history/futures month. my goal is one flash fiction story every day. all stories from the month here.

inspiration: dave jenkins’ ancestor story circle

it was an entire year before i noticed what all was happening.

i had been going out to the family tree every day. after i realized that the tree wasn’t just a metapor but a literal pathway to my ancestory, i started exploring it as much as possible. of course i still had to work and do chores and handle other (flesh) family obligations, but all i wanted to do was explore our lineage.

i found that each time i sat at the root of the tree and interwove with it, i was able to reach back just a little farther, or wider, in time. each rung backwards brought more people at an exponential scale. 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 greats, 16 great-greats and on and on. but getting to know each person still took the same amount of time. the journeying slowed but it was just as exciting day after day.

a year into my exploration, i started noticing that i was able to work my downward certain branches. certain people’s lineages that were horizontally (but not vertically) connected to mine felt possible to climb down. i only dabbled in this downwards traverse occasionally because there was so much above me that i wanted to know!

but today i took a leap and ran all the way down one of these branches… and realized the person at the bottom of the tree was alive! and she was sitting at the base of a tree in her parent’s backyard…

words / writing / post-processing
219w / 10min / 2min