Quill & Parchment: Bonsai

Bonsai
by Hannah Nguyen

Do you mind the hand

that prunes you
to a perfection
you did not choose,

the eyes that eclipse
your wilderness?

Here, in your bowl,
on the corner of this desk,
amongst the paperweights
and papers, where the sun's rays
tease at the windowsill,
do you feel robbed
of your birthright size?
Would you rather breathe
beside your brethren,
those astonishing maples
whose multitudes of arms
sprawl across spaces
you can't claim?
Do you wish
for the ever changing
width of the rain
over the slope
where you might have risen,
the halo of clouds
shrouding your untrimmed crown,
the shifting wind
that could make of your leaves
a whole, trembling garment
loosened at the touch?
Do you believe, as your keeper does,
that scarcity and sparseness
(your shrubs whittled down
to barely an utterance
of the branch)
extend the spirit?

Is that a dragon one sees–
twisting, fiery, defiantz–
in your surfaced root?

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