Four Skinny Trees - Sandra Cisneros

I really enjoyed this short piece. A couple of years ago, I adapted a short script from one of her stories from Woman Hollering Creek entitled "One Holy Night." There is so much that she says in such few words. It could very easily be written as a poem. The parallel imagery of four trees and four children reinforce the idea that humans are just as natural and vulnerable as trees. This essay reminds me very much of my family. I was always close to my four brothers and four sisters and there was a time in our lives when we had to move out of suburbia into the "bowels" of the city because of financial matters. There, we had few trees and greenery, just a large parking lot for a backyard. But we "grew despite concrete." I love the way this essay is written and I envy, envy, envy. So much that I have to make a sorry attempt at her style for myself. Here goes...

One stone was hard, solid, polished.
The other weathered, imperfect, rough.
The two collided,
creating nine separate pieces,
each its own size, shape, character.
Each its own stone,
perfectly capable of being alone,
but happier to be a part of something larger, original,
puzzle pieces pushing and pulling,
wanting to be whole.