Danielle Fleming, Louisville, Kentucky, USA
At night I dream of elephants under a swollen baobab tree
scoring through red bark in thick ropes.
Following vibrations, they march heavy-footed, singeing
tracks indelible into the earth. The matriarch lifts
her trunk towards a grim reminder of time. A skull—
sunbleached and sandblasted, another fractured death
burned into memory. Drying and stripped of bark,
I became that tree. The upside-down tree with roots
deep, branching out like capillaries burrowing
bottomless paths through time, splaying out underfoot,
connecting us to the veined routes of elephants. Men guess
at ages, examine multitudes by reading spiraling rings
growing faint, fading wild. The elephant, like the tree,
never forgets. I am a young girl tracing each bend
and whorl of my fingertip, remembering scratched bark
and the sound of grandmother’s footsteps
before the elephant trumpets.
Danielle Fleming was born and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana, but currently lives and writes in Louisville, KY where she works as a therapist, often using stories and poetry in her work with clients. She can be found on Instagram @havendf or on Twitter @danismalley10
