Once, there was a plum tree. It hovered like a cloud in an old lady’s black-fenced terrace.

The lady took one photograph of the tree each year for its birthday to remember the day she’d planted its seed and posted these photos like magnets onto her fridge door.

 Each winter, the tree shivered in the wind, restless and alone.

It feared it always would be.

Stems hold perfect petals that droop. Crimson dust is sprinkled on insides and buds stick out like tongues. Drops of rain sit quietly on their edges.

The way it twists on itself, curls up, then reaches out.

The way it cushions itself from all sides.

Come closer: the trees’ branches hold others, hold even groups of leaves that each branch out. In the after-rain wind, the tree’s leaves move in clusters like hands in a wave.