Shallow Roots
By Christina Simon
Mama and Sterling’s absences are long shadows cast in front of me, moving with the sun, disappearing at night, then reappearing long and dark again in the day. On the sidewalks of Los Angeles, I dodge these shadows, walking carefully to avoid them, never forgetting they are there.
The roots of a palm tree form a ball, fairly shallow, but wide enough to keep the tree from toppling over. I feel like these roots, a tangled mess of assorted, frayed brown strings, a woman who could be shattered by a gust of wind.
Mama, who told my little sister Sterling and me “Black is Beautiful” so many times we believed it. Homeschooled, we strolled along the Venice boardwalk holding hands. In my child’s mind our closeness would last forever.
I stare up at the palm trees until it hurts, tears pelting my bare arms. Towering, graceful, aloof creatures who gaze down on me, batting their lovely, long-lashed green eyes, lids half-closed, bored with the hot empty sidewalks below. Thin, tall bodies, wispy and willowy in the wind, clustered together, the palms whisper down to me, they can see up into Heaven.
About the Author:
Christina Simon is the nonfiction editor for Angels Flight Literary West, an online literary publication and curator of author salons at The Last Bookstore in Los Angeles. Her essays have been featured in Salon, The Broken City, Proximity’s blog, True, Entropy, Barren Magazine, PANK Magazine’s Heath and Healing Folio, and forthcoming in The Offing. Christina received her B.A. from U.C. Berkeley and her M.A. from UCLA. She is a volunteer with 826LA where she helps kids write their college essays. Christina lives with her husband, two teenagers and their rescue pit bull, Piper Spot.
About Weekly Flash Prose and Poetry:
CutBank Online features one work of flash prose or prose poetry every Monday. Submissions are free and open year-round. Send us your best work of 750 words or less at https://cutbank.submittable.com/submit.