Sakura Blossoms

Every year petals of joys float to the ground covering the soil pink. Every year I see kids running around playing ‘peak a’ boo’ behind the trees. While the adults walk through this area, holding hands, without a care in the world. Masked figures dance around in a manner that mimics the “Flowers’s dance” to the ground. As beautiful pale ladies in long silk kimonos that show gray cranes around the outer obi. Walk gracefully across the lawn, some of the pink petals manage to fall against their skin bringing color to their death white cheeks. Long black hair pulled up on top of their head, in an old fashion bun held by all different accessories. All there to celebrate our wonderful blossoms die away from this earth, only to be resurrected for many years to come.

‘If only I could smell their sweet sent they give off, their natural perfume that these humans and bees love so much. Later on, the sky turns darker. The water then falls out of the sky and gets everything and everyone wet. The young adults come out to walk on the now faded pink blossoms. Embraced in each other’s arms as the last petals begin to fall, over the unnoticed, unfazed lovers—covering them. As the water from the sky begins to slowly fade away like a hose slowly shutting off.

As the white round thing that the humans call “moon”, rises higher in the sky, this place becomes scarce, with only an animal or two. The wind now starts to come in fast, taking away the stray blossoms that dare to stay. A ‘hurricane’ of blossoms cast away and falls once more only to land in the water below, no longer pink but brown with age. Once remembered for their beauty now brown, withered, and torn float across the water slowly sinking to disappear in the dark watery grave below.

For 18 years now I have seen these events unfold, now at the peak of my age. The cold wind cuts though my bark, making my blooms weak and me frail. Now I pass down my beauty to the history of this land-land of Sakura-land of cherry blossoms. For this winter I will turn brown, and wither into a beautiful sakura tree yet to come.

~KiKaiya