In my dreams he is dead—when I wake he’s been dead twenty years—but in my dreams, we’re planting a maple sapling in our backyard. I’m maybe five or six. A thin, wiry thing. I sometimes look up the address on Google Earth and study the tree’s canopy covering the tiny yard. A still, quiet tire swing hangs from a thick, sturdy branch. After he’d dropped the root ball into the ground, he watered the soil and let me to pat it down, saying:
careful
careful
careful
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W.A. Hawkins is a writer from South Louisiana. You can find his work in this place and HAD.
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image: Jade Hawk is a meat popsicle.
Rejection Letters 