Bitch, you’re not a tree. With all your rootedness, you forgot how to use your damn feet. And you forgot these arms you spread like you’re on a cross aren’t branches. They’re not protecting little birds and crawling things. You don’t have leaves so why are you letting everything eat at you?

Your body exists to move, to metabolize, to both discover and to wander aimlessly. Sure, if your job was to stare straight into the sun, I’d let you grow that way. But you don’t grow that way.

I gave you hands with talent. Their function is not just to hold all this dirt. Your hands are translators, your hands have vision, your hands have voice. Pick up the guitar. Let the calluses sprout on your fingertips and let the pride sprout in your heart. I want to hear the same 7 songs you like to have on rotation. I want to see the sketches of women dancing freely to your music.

I gave you a golden throat. And by golden I mean brown and tanned and tuned through generations. Let the oceans of history rise up from your chest and pour forward through your neck. Or reach up into your head and let the dreams flow in a light stream. Fill this room with that voice, let it travel through the walls, let it wake the neighbors. Let them hear the call to joy in every note.

And, my dear, I gave you a mouth. This mouth of yours is magical because it extends down into your pen. Onto your screen. You’ve been keeping this mouth quiet but it is a cavern waiting for this all to come together. Trees speak through soft rustling leaves when the wind breezes by, or through aching falls when the world has stopped watching. You are no tree. You have soft, red lips that will crack if you ignore them. Lick those lips. And tell us what you have to say.