Foxglove

The Dead Sakura Tree

I slowly creep towards her
The child that sits on a moss-covered rock
Under a Sakura tree, silent as death itself
Her image as colourless as a black and white picture

She cradles a single blossom
In hands cupped pleadingly
As if offering gold to a merciless king
Or water to a man dying from dehydration

I crawl across the damp floor
Inch by inch I move endlessly closer
My presence wilting the surrounding flowers
Freezing and killing everything in my path

Still she sits motionless on the rock
Now covered in the blossoms
Of the dead tree that hangs above her menacingly
The bare branches reaching out as if to grab her

I get closer, I cannot see her face but I know something is wrong
Still she does not move, still she does not greet me
Her tiny fingers curled gently around the blossom
That is now dead in her hands, forever lost

I get even closer and now I can see her face
Eyes the colour of the snow now lying on the ground
The hair around her face like a black curtain
And her lips the colour of new bruises

The fingers that looked so gentle and soft before
Now are as cold and lifeless as a moonless night
As they clutch the poor dead blossom
Like a lifeline or even a gate to another world
-Poem by me, HavenLee.