I could say the umbrella pines in Rome look like ostrich feathers in the middle of Villa Borghese / not umbrellas at all but ostriches with their upswept feathers / their necks in the ground searching for food / birds that will never take flight // and you would say that I’ve said that before a thousand times / written it down even / and you would be right // And I could say that you can recognize a beech tree by its muscular bark, the smooth grooves, the slender trunks / that these European leaves are the same ones we find back home / prickle and stripe / thick in the forests of my childhood / that it was something we learned at summer camp when we blazed trails and stood tall and brave on forest floors / built tiny houses for the forest people out of twigs and pine needles and acorn hats / tucked ourselves into cabin cots / hit tether balls until our knuckles ached / sang Hallelujah // Or how on Pleasant Run in my hometown there are sycamore trees with their peeling bark that have accompanied me all my life, their broad yellow leaves that float like goldfinches, crisp and bright and filled with song / there when we tiptoed through the creek just past Audubon Avenue, caught crawdads in our eight-year-old hands / there on my morning jog around the golf course, turn left on 10th street past the grave yard, turn left again on Arlington and keep going till you see the trees / there the evening I drove you home for the first time, how I took the scenic route so you would think that even my American streets were beautiful // And yet I was with you in the piazza in Bologna when the ginkgo tree shed all of its leaves at once, a swift shiver, a golden flight / I was with you in the mountains when the moon lit the stones in puddles / and we leapt down bouldered hills / sang the Italian songs that you taught me / there when you taught me the Italian for oak tree and acorn and sparrow / and the rustling leaves / how the word for branches is shorter than the word for twigs / rami, ramoscielli / and how that first time we were together in Rome we walked with our heads low along the Tiber River, past ruins and cobbled streets and parakeets in pine trees / past islands in the river and angel bridges / before anything was lost / words and mothers and family and the maps we once folded / and earthquakes and floods / we walked and walked and I held your hand // and the Sycamore trees dipped their little leaf hulls into the water like boats / skimming the surface / like maybe they were speaking to me / whispering my name / asking me to try and call you “home.”
Jacqueline Goyette is a writer from Indianapolis, Indiana. Her work was selected for the 2025 Best Small Fictions anthology and her writing has been nominated for Best of the Net and Best Microfiction. You can find her work in both print and online journals, including JMWW, trampset, Phoebe Journal, Stanchion, Gone Lawn, The Forge Literary Magazine and Centaur Lit. She currently lives in the small town of Macerata, Italy with her husband Antonello and her cat Cardamom.