Short story: breanna leslie
Unobstructed View
I look through the branches, but their gnarly twists and shredded twigs only offer bits and pieces. Through the most narrow divide, I see her. Long frizzy ponytail and a pudgy belly, she still thinks she can do anything. Maybe she’s eight, maybe nine, no one has commented on the size of her jeans yet.
Three feet up and to the right, a glimpse into year thirteen is just visible through the patchy leaves. It’s the year she discovered the sheer savage nature of the female sex. Best friends will trample right over the drowning girl to secure a place in the circle. The right circle, that is.
To the left, tattered and hanging from the same branch, there’s a painful reminder of the guilt she felt when a group of boys held her down and touched her in all the places she screamed not to. She imagined it was her fault and carried that for a few years. I imagine it will fall off soon, be carried away by the wind.
The long cumbersome branches carry the eye up but break into a hundred tributaries. They divide the picture into fragments, much like the careful cuts and arrangements of a stained glass window. From far away, they paint a picturesque scene, but from my seat I look upon all the painful cuts necessary for the intricate build.
Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. They sit upon a flimsy switch, hardly any leaves. I see the boy she thought she loved and all the times he lied. She’s blind to the manipulation, a curse of the age. Her world seems so small and he fills it right up, leaving little room to see her worth. Those memories are precarious and some days I can only hope a heavy storm will tear them from the tree, making way for bright new blooms.
A sharp break frames the day she faced her father’s passing. Heavy words and blurry day’s decorate the bark like an insidious parasite. It changed the way she looked at family and how she viewed her place at the table. Less than.
Traveling up, tiny twigs take the place of sturdy branches but they open the view. Distinct choices echo through the gaps. Choices she made to satisfy them, the choices she made for her, they intertwine into the mess that is her twenties. “You can’t marry him, don’t major in that, get a good job, grow up.” Some were smart. Some feel like poison upon second glance, a shot of arsenic used to drown out her dreams.
The canopy opens wide, freeing the eye to look upon the blueness of the world. The character of the tree is unobstructed, finally. The person, clear after seeing her in fragments for so long. Sure, the fluttering leaves holding the words and feelings of the past reach up and tickle the sky. It’s a constant reminder of who watered the tree.
But for the first time, I look upon a clear portrait of who the little girl with the frizzy hair wanted to be. And free from knotty intruders and failing bark, I’ll hold her hand while we chase it together.
about the writer: breanna leslie
Breanna is a stay-at-home momma by day and a writer by night. She enjoys darker fiction and personal essays. Currently she’s editing a novel and submitting the odd piece to literary journals when she finds the time. Her piece “Unobstructed View” was inspired by the January prompt from Write Bitch Write.
Website: http://Hereatjeffersonhouse.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/breetleslie/
