Nic Job

Sky Nest

The tree grew a cup of branches just for me, to hide my little body from the ground below and introduce me to the sky. From the branches of this tree at the top of the driveway, the whole world spread out beneath us: muddy horse-pasture, round-pen, garage, log-cabin house, gravel road and steep driveway winding across the ridge of a mountain that fell away as far as the eye could see on one side, abutted the next ridge on the second, and climbed higher on the third. I always looked to the first side, measured the distance between my pine-nest and the faded blue of the horizon, turned my back to the gravel and bark-sided barn that reminded me you are not alone.

It’s easy to pretend deafness when some forty-odd feet in the air and hidden by branches. Cradled, pine-sap sharp in my nose, bark like a tiger’s tongue against my shins.

It’s easy to pretend the voices from below are the branches I grasped and bent under my feet on my path upwards, jealous, hawking their own sturdiness and comfort. Stay safe with us, don’t climb so high.

There is no other eyrie fit for my perch.

A sticky braid and prickled shins are a small price to pay for a seat in nature’s crow’s nest, even if Mamá says I’ll be paying with a fall and a broken skull, not to mention you’ll be grounded if you don’t get down from there this instant!

“Try not to mind your mother,” Daddio says, “Can’t you feel the crack in her forehead?”

Magic, the tree whispers. What are angry words and broken skulls compared to the sky?

Nic Job is a student of the world and spends as much time as they can traveling and observing. Cultures, places, people, and themself. Their work appears in Club Plum and Oyster River Pages.