My parents told me not to swallow cherries whole. Spit the pits out — not here, not where everyone can see. Go somewhere alone, they said, where no one will witness the disgusting act of the pit leaving your mouth.

So I went alone into a dark alley.

Hands covered my mouth before I could spit.

Beneath sheets of earth I lie now. Earth in my mouth, worms in my nostrils, sand in my eyes. My flesh melting; maggots squirm in my muscles, larvae feed in my stomach, rats gnaw my face.

Crack.

The cherry pit splits. A green band emerges from the stone, crawls up my spine, slips through my ribcage. Roots burrow into the remnants of my flesh, slither through my hip, fill my bones with red wood.

A tree stands where I used to be.

Will it survive, its roots strangled by my ribs?

Will it lose its grip, raise its roots into the air,

take me to the surface,

let me see the sun again?